Latin America was hard hit by the economic fallouts of the COVID-19 emergency. This exacerbated already pre-existing high levels of inequality on several dimensions and poses new challenges for green structural transformation.

Regional integration, especially productive integration in dynamic, green and innovative sectors, can be used as a strategic tool to boost economic development, reduce inequality in a structural way and keep raising the standards of living for all Latin Americans.
 

Objective of the Project

Building on successful past experiences in favoring regional integration in other areas of the world and on its lasting cooperation with several Latin American countries, UNCTAD will launch in the first quarter of 2024 a Development Account project to strengthen the design of industrial policy and economic and productive integration between selected economies in Latin America, improve coordination on industrial and trade policy, and ultimately contribute to green structural transformation, by developing capacities to design policies for economic recovery, and inequality reduction in the continent.

The project will be carried on in strict coordination with several international partners (OECD Development Center, UNIDO and ECLAC/CEPAL) and will focus, among other things, on clean energy supply (renewable energies and biofuel chain), eco-tourism, waste and recycling, sustainable mobility and the use of digital technologies for sustainable development.
 

Link to the SDGs

The project aims to contribute to SDG 8 : "Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all" and SDG 9: "Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation".

It also aims to contribute to SDG 13 and SDG 17.

SDG 13 is about climate action and countries are urged to "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts".

SDG 17 calls for "Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development".
 

Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring will be undertaken by UNCTAD management, namely, the Director of UNCTAD's Division on Globalization and Development Strategies.

The Director will hold quarterly meetings with project staff to ensure project milestones are being met and adequate staff resources are available for full implementation of the project as described herein.

To assess how the project is performing with regards to its expected outcomes, the project team will collect data against the indicators of achievement that are included in the results framework.

In accordance with the DA evaluation framework and project evaluation guidelines, a terminal evaluation to be conducted by an external evaluator will be required for half of the 16th tranche projects. In case this project is selected for evaluation, a detailed evaluation plan will be developed.

The qualitative and quantitative data, including those in relation to the indicators of achievements, collected by the UNCTAD project staff through the project implementation will be used for evaluation purposes.

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