“Knowledge for Inclusive Policies for Sustainable Development
The Sustainability Insight #16 organized on 23 September 2020 featured Prof Jeff Camkin, Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia’s Institute of Agriculture and the International Water Centre, Griffith University, Australia, and Ms Sharizad Sulaiman, Programme Officer for the Malaysian National Commission for UNESCO.
“A vision for the future that all can aligned with and fight for together” was the opinion made by Prof Camkin, on how all the relevant partners and stakeholders contributed together in achieving the goals and objectives that benefits all.
Prof Camkin also stressed on how knowledge sharing should be made to include the common people and communities. This would be combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches, where the knowledge and wisdom of the laymen to be taken into account by policymakers or academicians. He further elaborated that many institutions and experts from various countries globally were involved in the Malaysia-UNESCO Cooperation Programme (MUCP) platform, contributing to the pooling of knowledge.
Ms Sharizad meanwhile clarified on the initiatives implemented by the Government of Malaysia, which includes Hari UNESCO Malaysia. She further explained that Hari UNESCO Malaysia is as event organized to help create awareness and promote on UNESCO affiliated activities in Malaysia, as well as publicizing the awards received by Malaysian individuals or institutions that is related to UNESCO.
Ms Sharizad also highlighted that all the MUCP projects support and contribute to the SDGs, with the MUCP framework itself supporting the SDG 17 on partnerships. Sharing her experience as the previous Malaysia Funds-In-Trust Coordinator, she stressed on that MUCP is a South-South Cooperation initiative which pooled experts and institutions to work and learn together, producing several tools, which even the Malaysian National Commission is now using, such as the SETI Scorecard.
Both guest speakers agreed that institutions from Malaysia and other countries that participated in this programme have benefitted from the networking, reciprocal knowledge sharing and exposure to the global communities.
Moderated by Prof. Shahbaz Khan, director of UNESCO Office in Jakarta, Regional Science Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, he concluded that an inclusive method of documenting and collecting the input and knowledge that is already available is the fundamental to create inclusive policies. He further continued that the knowledge pooled and tools produced should be shared with others outside of the MUCP framework, who can benefit from data.