Welcome to the United Nations
Annex 1
The main messages of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan has been working step-by-step towards Sustainable Development since the first days of its independence.
In 2019, Kazakhstan submitted its first Voluntary National Review (VNR) on Sustainable Development Goals and reaffirmed its commitment to the SDGs.
After three years, Kazakhstan presents a second VNR to assess progress and demonstrate implementation of the country's objectives determined in the previous edition of the VNR.
The first review identified the main areas in which Kazakhstan continued to work towards Sustainable Development in the medium term. Over the three-year period, these areas have achieved the following:
· The state planning system of the Republic of Kazakhstan has introduced requirements on the need to take into account national SDG indicators while developing of strategic and programme documents.
· The list of national SDG indicators has been approved, and forecast values up to 2030 have been determined for the current indicators.
· In 2019-2021, Kazakhstan, with the support of the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), carried out a Development Finance Assessment (DFA). As a result, some limitations and opportunities that affect the progress in achieving the SDG were identified:
- the need to determine the total amount of funding requirements;
- growing cost pressures associated with Covid-19;
- weak budgetary integration of the SDGs;
- the large capacity of nongovernmental organizations and the philanthropic sector.
· Active work is underway to ensure harmonization of budget planning with the SDG.
So far, Kazakhstan is at the initial stage of integrating the SDG into budget planning. In order to assess the interrelation of budget expenditures with the objectives of sustainable development, a rapid comprehensive assessment of budget programs was conducted.
Effective allocation of budgetary funds taking into account the principles of the SDG requires an analysis to highlight gender issues of different categories of the population. In 2020 with the support of UN-Women developed a methodology for gender analysis on the example of Akmola region. As part of this review, experts of the Institute for Economic Research conducted a small gender analysis in the areas of education, health and social protection in the context of regions.
Also, with the support of UNICEF, a mechanism for children's budgeting was developed, which will be used in the analysis of the Child Well-Being Index.
· Kazakhstan strengthens its work in the field of environmental protection. In 2019, the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources was founded. A water and energy consortium of Central Asia (CA) is being established, and regional cooperation in the Aral Sea basin under the Blue Peace Central Asia initiative is underway.
Within the framework of the new Ecological code the management of wastes, their processing and consumption has been improved.
Kazakhstan actively cooperates with international partners. With the support of UNDP and the European Union, a regional SDG Knowledge Sharing Platform for Central Asia was launched in 2021. The main objective of the Platform is to facilitate the achievement of the SDGs in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan by integrating efforts on a regional scale through the SDG monitoring and financing process.
· The civil sector and businesses have begun to actively engage in localizing the SDG. One good example is the work of the Sustainable Rural Development Fund (the Fund). The Fund implements a sustainable development strategy in 4 rural areas with the support of business and civil society.
In the three years since the first presentation of the VNR, Kazakhstan has implemented a number of important measures to achieve the SDG. In particular, measures for targeted social support of the population have been developed, work on the development of a comprehensive national strategy for financing projects in the field of sustainable development has begun, work on the carbon neutrality of the economy is in progress.
In addition, there is an active work on involvement of the population in the process of SDG implementation. A wide range of population is involved in the process of VNR preparation by holding field workshops in the regions of the country. More than 2,500 citizens of the country, from among representatives of local executive bodies, civil society, independent experts, persons with disabilities, pensioners, representatives of the academic community, youth (schoolchildren and students), representatives of the private sector and other stakeholders participated in the discussion of the VNR project.
The VNR project, as well as each individual chapter, went through open public discussions in micro-groups with the participation of representatives of state bodies and international organizations, the civil sector and independent experts.
Conducting a business game "Mission - 2030" in all 17 regions of the country allowed to identify priority areas of SDG implementation for each region of the country and draw a portrait of each region. Also, during the roadshows in 17 regions of Kazakhstan the following relevant SDG were identified by voting:
- SDG 1 Poverty Elimination.
- SDG 3 Good Health and Well-Being;
- SDG 4 High Quality Education;
- SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation;
- SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth.
Therefore, the Review will provide a detailed analysis on the SDG data.
During the preparation of the VNR it was possible not only to involve all stakeholders, but also to establish a dialogue between representatives of the government, population and business.
This Review presents a willingness to take serious action to implement the Global Agenda by improving the institutional mechanisms, tools, and plans that already exist or need to be created.
