Find out how Japan was able to achieve sustainable development through strong leadership and effective implementation of national policies.

Learn how the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative can bring several potential corruption risks.

Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur H. Carandang, LL.M. shares current initiatives in combating corruption in the Philippines. His presentation also enumerates proposed legislative reforms to prevent cases of corruption.

Alexandra Vogl, Urban Development Specialist at Asian Development Bank (ADB), enumerates the important factors that make a city inclusive. GIZ Senior Advisor Aparna Daz, in the second half of the video, shares the lessons from India’s Inclusive Cities Partnership Program, and specifies the project component that ADB should consider valuable when supporting inclusiveness. This interview video was produced by ADB.

GIZ Senior Advisor Aparna Daz presents the work done under the Inclusive Cities Partnership Program (ICCP) on various housing solution options for the urban poor. ICCP is a collaborative effort between the Government of India and GIZ India under a three-year cooperation, which started in November 2014. This video of the learning event was produced by ADB.

While the similarities of international development goals help provide comparisons across countries, there is a need for decentralized tracking as a result of differentiated challenges. The question is whether to localize or to customize these goals in the context of Asia and the Pacific.

Policy-based loans (PBLs) are important instruments that address both legal and regulatory policy constraints to develop a more conducive environment. The benefits and challenges of employing PBLs in the Asian Development Banks’ governance work are explained in this presentation. Important lessons learned from the provision of governance PBLs are shared.

Decentralization and local government reforms have been adopted by numerous countries in the Asia and Pacific region in recent decades. The rationale and motivation for these reform initiatives, many of which were aimed at strengthening sub-national governments, have been as diverse as the reform context in each country.

Most countries in Asia and the Pacific have decentralized the delivery of basic services to some extent. Political dynamics, however, remain an important driver based on Southeast Asia’s reform experiences in local government. The local government reforms introduced in the Philippines and Cambodia are featured as examples in this presentation.

India’s urbanization, characterized as hidden and messy, is in place. The link between operations and policies calls for the creation of a new city governance system that encourages shared responsibility. The Inclusive Cities Partnership Program is introduced to support the national government in exploring housing solutions for the urban poor.