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Advancing SDG 9 in the Pacific : financing, resilient infrastructure, innovation and diversification
No full textFor Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure is foundational to resilience, inclusion and long-term sustainability. In geographically dispersed island nations, infrastructure is not merely an economic input; it is the backbone of connectivity, service delivery, disaster preparedness and social cohesion. Innovation and inclusive industrialization offer critical pathways to overcome scale constraints, remoteness and vulnerability to climate change.
Yet progress toward SDG 9 across Pacific SIDS remains uneven. The Sustainable Development Goals Extended Report 2025 highlights persistent gaps in access to credit, digital connectivity and infrastructure quality. While more than 40 per cent of small firms in Pacific SIDS have access to loans, financing remains shallow and uneven, particularly for micro- and small family run and/or owned enterprises. At the same time, nearly one quarter of the Pacific SIDS population still lacks access to mobile broadband, limiting participation in the digital economy and access to essential services. These disparities threaten to entrench structural vulnerabilities unless addressed through coordinated, SIDS-specific policy action and effective implementation.
This policy brief synthesizes perspectives from Pacific SIDS governments, regional institutions, development partners and communities to outline a coherent pathway for accelerating SDG 9 aligned with the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. It emphasizes climate-resilient infrastructure, innovative and blended financing, digital transformation, economic diversification and inclusive governance as mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development in Pacific SIDS.I. Why SDG 9 is Critical for Pacific SIDS 5
Infrastructure Challenges in Pacific SIDS 5
Building Climate-Resilient and Right-Sized Infrastructure 6
Financing Infrastructure and De-Risking Investment 6
Innovation and Digital Connectivity in Pacific SIDS Contexts 7
Economic Diversification and Local Value Creation 8
Youth, Gender and Inclusion 8
Coordination, Data and Regional Cooperation among Pacific SIDS 9
II. Conclusion: Delivering SDG 9 for Pacific SIDS 10
Annex 1: Contributors (non-anonymous feedback) 1
Regional Digital Trade Integration Index (RDTII) 2.1 economy profile 2025 : Tajikistan (Russian version)
No full textRegional Digital Trade Integration Index (RDTII) 2.1 economy profile 2025 : Russian Federation
No full text
Regional Digital Trade Integration Index (RDTII) 2.1 economy profile 2025 : Russian Federation (Russian version)
No full textDigital Trade Regulatory Review for North and Central Asia, 2025
No full textThe report provides a comparative overview of digital trade regulatory practices across the North and Central Asia region. The analysis is based on the Regional Digital Trade Integration Index (RDTII 2.1) framework, a comprehensive tool that helps identify patterns of convergence and divergence to inform evidence-based policymaking. Furthermore, to quantify the alignment among economies, the Digital Trade Regulatory Similarity (DTRS) Index is calculated from the RDTII 2.1 data to assess potential complexity of digital trade integration across the North and Central Asia
Using Geostationary Earth Observation Satellite for Air Pollution Monitoring in Southeast Asia: Practice and Policy Recommendations
No full textThe Building the Pan-Asia Partnership for Geospatial Air Pollution information (PAPGAPi) project is a regional initiative launched in 2021 and implemented through the end of 2024, led in collaboration with United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacifi c (UN ESCAP), Republic of Korea’s Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER), and national agencies across the Asia-Pacifi c. The project’s core objective is to strengthen geospatial air-pollution information by expanding access to both space-based and ground-based remote sensing data. Space-based observations come from the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) onboard GEO-KOMPSAT-2B (GK-2B), while ground-based observations come from Pandora spectrometers. Together, these datasets support regional-scale analysis of atmospheric composition, including cross-border pollution dynamics, and provide a pathway for validation and operational use.
The discussion emphasizes a dual structure of air quality drivers: persistent anthropogenic emissions in urban/industrial zones and episodic, seasonally intense events (biomass burning, dust) that can dominate national aerosol loading during peak months. Regionally, the coherence of pollution patterns highlights that national air quality cannot be interpreted in isolation; transport, shared meteorology, and cross-border emission sources require coordinated regional monitoring and policy responses. Key limitations include incomplete spatial coverage in some countries, systematic data gaps from instrument-related artifacts, seasonally elevated retrieval uncertainty (especially AOD under clouds/high humidity and over complex surfaces), and the inability of GEMS to observe nighttime conditions due to its passive solar measurement principle—meaning diurnal cycles and nighttime accumulation are not captured.
Recommendations prioritize (1) densifying ground-based networks through not only additional fi xed ground site locations but also overlapped or “super”-sites, and mobile/ad-hoc deployments to improve representativeness and validation (“ground truth”); (2) coordinated co-location and multilateral planning for verifi cation across countries and ground-based instrument types; (3) synergistic multi-satellite use—combining geostationary and low-Earth-orbit sensors (and potentially emerging constellations) through cross-calibration, harmonization, and structured integration to address accuracy, coverage, and diurnal gaps; and (4) institutionalization—embedding monitoring, data sharing, QA practices, and regional collaboration into formal mandates so satellite-based products support routine decision-making, early warning, and transboundary policy. The overall direction is to improve satellite accuracy, reduce information asymmetries, and strengthen evidence for coordinated regional air-quality management.Table of Contents................................................................................................................... 3
Summary..................................................................................................................... 4
I. Introduction............................................................................................................... 5
II. PAPGAPi Project..................................................................................................... 5
Pandora..............................................................................................................................6
Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer....................................................... 7
III. Country Case Study..........................................................................................................7
Cambodia...........................................................................................................................8
Indonesia............................................................................................................................9
Lao PDR........................................................................................................................... 11
Mongolia...........................................................................................................................12
The Philippines.................................................................................................................13
Thailand............................................................................................................................14
Viet Nam...........................................................................................................................16
III. Discussion............................................................................................................ 17
National Perspective........................................................................................................ 18
Regional Perspective....................................................................................................... 18
Limitations........................................................................................................................ 19
IV. Recommendation(s)........................................................................................................19
Densification of Network...................................................................................................20
Interoperative use of satellite sources..............................................................................20
Institutionalization.............................................................................................................21
Annex I: Example coverage of GEMS over PAPGAPi sites..............................................22
Annex II: List of PAPGAPi Sites..........................................................................................23
Annex III: Time Series of PANDORA observation............................................................. 24
Cambodia.........................................................................................................................24
Indonesia..........................................................................................................................24
Mongolia...........................................................................................................................24
The Philippines.................................................................................................................24
Lao PDR...........................................................................................................................25
Thailand............................................................................................................................25
Vietnam............................................................................................................................ 2
Benefits of Participation in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement: Trade Gains and Trade Cost Reductions a Decade after Adoption
No full textThis paper assesses the impact of participation in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on international trade flows and trade costs. Using a variety of empirical models, the study finds robust and statistically significant evidence that the Agreement has helped reduce trade costs by 1.5 to 4 percent on average. Building on the results of a structural gravity model, the analysis further evaluates the broader trade and welfare implications of the Agreement under a scenario of no participation. The results suggest that if the TFA had not been negotiated and entered into force, global agriculture and manufacturing trade would be more than 9 percent lower than what it is. Real wages would be 1.4 percent lower and producer prices about 2.0 percent higher. Looking forward, taking into account the already extensive WTO TFA membership, achieving universal participation in the agreement as it stands could be expected to yield only marginal additional trade gains of approximately USD 23 billion
