On March 22, 2023 at the UN Headquarters in New York City, the first global UN conference on water in 46 years will be held. The conference aims to build new commitments, pledges and actions by Governments and all stakeholders towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, and water-related targets across all SDGs, in order to move us collectively towards the Water Action Agenda.
The Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan, Canadian Minister of International Development & Pacific Economic Development, recently visited MEDA’s Resilience and Inclusion through Investment for Sustainable Agrikultura (RIISA) project in Mindanao, Philippines.
It would be simple for most development organizations, including the UN, to say that biodiversity matters to everyone. This is why most high-income countries, particularly those involved in COP15, provide investment support to tackle biodiversity problems. For lower to middle-income countries such as the Philippines, the question is, does biodiversity matter to political leaders?
Globally, the face of sustainably produced or sourced cocoa tends to be more of an
environmental concern. Historically, cacao production is linked to deforestation,
biodiversity loss, and soil degradation in major cacao-producing countries. However,
taking the fundamental elements of market systems approach, sustainability transcends
environmental considerations. In MEDA’s integrated market systems approach, sustainability does
not only entail environmental aspects, but economic, social, and governance factors as well.
To better explain MEDA’s transformational journey towards embracing a North-South equilibrium and developing partnerships that are based on delivering systems-level impacts in agri-food systems, Catherine Sobrevega (Country Director, Philippines) and Geoffrey Juma (Country Director, Kenya) sat down with Jessica Villanueva, Senior Director, Technical Areas of Practice to reflect in their own words how their work addresses current trends in international development and contributes to the goals espoused by MEDA’s Strategic Plan.
I was born and raised in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country. The Philippines is one of only two nations in Asia with a substantial Catholic population, along with East Timor. The country also has the third-largest Catholic population in the world, after Brazil and Mexico.
On August 19, 2021, MEDA staff members, Catherine Sobrevega and Mujtaba Ali, met over Zoom with Sir Noel Antonio V. Gaerlan, Commissioner of the Philippines
Mennonite Economic Development Associates is an international economic development organization that creates business solutions to poverty.
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