The Chinese Province of Guangdong wanted to increase its knowledge of conservation agriculture practices that would help achieve sustainable crop production and reduce surface water pollution. During its exchange with Brazil, the Province learned about good conservation agriculture practices and the policies and technical support needed to promote the practice.  This enabled Guandong to refine design and implementation plans for its conservation agriculture activities.

Challenge

With the continued economic growth of East Asian and Pacific (EAP) developing countries, public concern has increased about the appropriateness of and transparency around public expenditures.  Recent corporate collapses and increased corruption cases focused attention once again on auditors’ roles and performance, since government auditing plays a vital part in safeguarding public assets. Compared with others in EAP, Mongolia’s and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic’s (Lao PDR) government auditors or Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) are weak.

India’s national and state governments sought to build their capacity to decentralize funding and responsibilities to local governments and monitor CDD programs providing grants to communities. Indian delegates engaged in a nine-day study tour to Indonesia to learn about the structure and operations of Indonesia’s National Program for Community Empowerment (PNPM), which provides similar grants.

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Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) is still using hand signals at nearly all traffic intersections. To reduce pollution and manage heavy traffic, DMP and agencies related to transport needed to learn to appreciate and finish implementation of a basic traffic signal system for key intersections throughout the city.

In 1995, with technical assistance from the World Bank, Indonesia introduced its Program for Pollution Control Evaluation and Rating (PROPER), the first such environmental rating and disclosure (ERD) initiative in the developing world. With experience from Indonesia, the World Bank helped introduce the concept to other countries, including Ghana, and eventually to the Indian State of Odisha. This made Odisha the first state to begin ranking pollution intensive industries.

Coffee, Burundi’s primary export crop, is the main source of income for more than 600,000 families, or about 30% of the population. Most of the families are small-scale farmers, and among the poorest people in the country. Unsustainable and unregulated coffee production in Burundi has contributed to land degradation, which in turn depresses productivity and increases vulnerability to climate change. Coffee farmers use steep slopes, often eliminating trees on hillsides to grow coffee under full sun, practices that contribute to land degradation and biodiversity loss.

China is a founding member of the South-South Facility and the second largest donor to the program. Since 2008, China has contributed US$2.3 million, which represents 15% of the total funding for the SSF. China is also the 4th largest knowledge provider in exchanges supported by the SSF. Over the past ten years, China participated in 23 knowledge exchanges with 33 countries.