The 2030 Agenda has set the of goal universal access to electricity by 2030. The challenge is significant. It involves reaching population with limited incomes, often living in sparsely populated areas, mostly in developing and least developed countries. Costs can tally. Taking into account local characteristics, this model finds the combination of technologies that can provide universal access to the population of every country at the lowest cost.

Professor Willi Semmler of The New School and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming was the keynote speaker at the Development Policy Seminar on “A Macroeconomic Framework for Climate Investment with Implications for Structural Change and Employment” held today in New York.

Half a century after its launch the CDP remains at the forefront of international development thinking, providing innovative, timely and practical advice from across the disciplines

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA) released an informational video on the ePing trade notification tool, launched in November 2016 by UN/DESA, in cooperation with the World Trade Organization and the International Trade Centre.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYppD0SJ5_8[/embed]

The World Economic Situation and Prospects 2017 (WESP), published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA), was launched in a press conference in New York on 17 January by Assistant-Secretary-General for Economic Development, Lenni Montiel, and Senior Economic Affairs Officer, Dawn Holland.

Nazrul Islam, Hiroshi Kawamura and Marcelo LaFleur, Economic Affairs Officers from the Development Strategy and Policy Analysis Unit of DPAD, presented the World Economic and Social Survey 2016 at the Climate Change and Global Justice event at The New School in New York.

On 24th January 2017, the DPAD/DSP unit organized a Development Policy Seminar on the topic of “Built to Connect - How buildings and infrastructure form the foundation for sustainable communities”. The seminar was presented by Ms. Gaya Branderhorst (Director, Data & Analytics at KPMG, New York), and it was chaired by Ms. Diana Alarcón (Chief, DESA DPAD/DSP unit).

As part of an outreach training course developed by UN-DESA/DPAD and UNDP in collaboration with other partners, the Regional Workshop on “Modelling Tools to inform national Policies for Sustainable Development and the 2030 Agenda” took place on 23-26 January in Istanbul. The objective of this workshop is to enhance understanding, among development practitioners, on how modelling tools can be used to unveil the interlinkages and tradeoffs across different policy areas for sustainable development.

How much a person earns or owns is not the only indicator of well-being, says Alarcon. You also have to look at access to education, proper housing, health care and decent jobs. "In those dimensions of development, progress has been made," she says. "Although large inequalities remain."

DPAD and Nicaragua's Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (MHCP) organized the final training workshop on economy-wide modelling for sustainable development policy analysis, on 15-18 November, in Managua. This workshop marked the completion of the training stage of a capacity building process for analysts from different government institutions, in the framework of the project “Supporting developing countries in their transition from MDG-based development strategies to broader sustainable development strategies through modelling-based policy analyses”.