RC Anders Pedersen Talking Points: Greening Recovery and Investment-Led Growth in Jordan Roundtable discussions

• It is very timely to come together [the UN, World Bank and the EU]. This meeting coincides with the recent launch of the Government of Jordan Economic Priority for 2021- 2023. More specifically, the Government identified 53 priorities which span across three different pillars (i) Improving Business and Investment Environment (ii)Enhancing Competition and Increasing Employment (iii) Supporting priority sectors.  As these priorities puts a lot of emphasis on job creation, investment stimulation and the boosting of priority sectors, this opens several opportunities for the green recovery in Jordan, such as investing in sustainable jobs and business through a clear and just transition as well as enhancing circular investments.
• Green recovery sets a great opportunity for building forward better and for supporting the most vulnerable. More specifically, recent studies demonstrated that (i) Spending on clean energy has an impact on GDP that is about 2x-7x stronger—than spending on non-eco-friendly energy (ii) investments in renewable energies, building efficiency and green transport would add 20.5 million jobs by 2030.
• During the State of Planet hosted by Columbia University the UN Secretary General said:  the world is “facing a devastating pandemic, new heights of global heating, new lows of ecological degradation and new setbacks in our work towards global goals for more equitable, inclusive and sustainable development. To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken.” In this sense, the UN development system has an important role to play at the country level in programming, operations, communication, and advocacy.
• In Jordan, a more strengthened coordination with the IFIs remains a key cornerstone of my priorities during my time here in Jordan. I believe that this is a “must” if we want to improve the scale and impact of our work to support Jordan. It is the way forward to come together as the international community in support of national priorities.
•  To this effect, we initiated a dialogue with the World Bank, the IMF and EBRD to explore ways to strengthen our cooperation -  one key outcome identified is the WB’s  Programme for Results (PfR) on climate-friendly investments where two issues were identified as potential areas of work going forward, i.e., green growth and women’s economic empowerment. Both themes fit very well within our (Building Forward Better) agenda. The rationale for this partnership is the convergence of priorities identified by the UN, EBRD, WB and IMF, notably on financing climate friendly investments and leveraging our comparative advantages.   The UN in Jordan has identified climate justice, accountable institutions and inclusive growth as the three key priorities for 2021.
• Green recovery, access to finance for green and new technology investments would create incentives for the private sector to speed up their investments to empower both tangible and intangible assets in the Jordanian economy. It is crucial to embed the Leave No One Behind principle in inclusive green recovery policy analysis or advisory as well as -sustainable infrastructures and renewable/energy.
• The UN Jordan strongly supports the Government of Jordan’s actions on structural issues with the Reform Matrix, the government’s executive economic program and the economic priorities program policies through its operational and policy advice tools.  
• The UN Jordan would always be a strategic partner of the government of Jordan in its long term development journey and would also collectively work with the Bank and other IFIs to support this process and ensure the creation of an enabling environment for private sector green finance through incentives and standards as well as providing strategic advice that may facilitate the process of greening budgets and repurposing environmentally harmful subsidies.

[1] IMF, 2021.