NE Sustainable Development Goals Conclave to be held in Assam next week

North East Sustainable Development Goals Conclave 2020 will be held in Assam next week which will see participation from state governments, central ministries, academia and civil society, an official statement said on Wednesday. Government think-tank Niti Aayog is organising the 'Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Conclave 2020: Partnerships, Cooperation and Development of North Eastern States'.

The event is being held in association with the North Eastern Council, Government of Assam, Tata Trusts, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). The three-day event (February 24-26) will be held at Assam Administrative Staff College, Guwahati.

The inaugural session will be presided over by Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar, Minister of State in Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Jitendra Singh and chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura and Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant. The valedictory address would be delivered by UNDP India Resident Representative Shoko Noda, the statement said.

Technical sessions would include sessions pertaining to SDG localisation in the northeast, economic prosperity and sustainable livelihoods, climate adaptive agriculture, health and nutrition, education, skill development and entrepreneurship, connectivity and infrastructure development & inequality and exclusion. Niti Aayog has the mandate of overseeing the adoption and monitoring of SDGs at the national and sub-national level.

The statement noted that progress in the northeast region is crucial in this decade of action for the country to achieve the SDGs by 2030. In terms of SDG localisation, the states in the region have taken major strides in integrating the Agenda 2030 framework in their developmental planning and vision documents, it said.