United States Joins Seed Initiative

Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky announced today that the United States was joining the Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (Seed) Initiative. The Seed Initiative, a voluntary public-private partnership, encourages local partnerships by assisting new development solutions to community challenges. "Partnerships, such as Seed, are vital to helping local communities improve the quality of their citizens’ lives and can make an important contribution to the world community’s efforts to achieve development goals," stated Under Secretary Dobriansky.

Seed, originally announced at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, will link large and small entrepreneurs from all parts of the world to build local ability to support the outcomes from the World Summit on Sustainable Development and internationally agreed goals contained in the Millennium Declaration.

The partnership has three objectives:

To recognize innovative, promising approaches through a biennial award program. Seed honorees will receive support services based on their partnership's goals.

To showcase the selected partnerships on the Internet at www.seedinit.org.

To provide a lessons-learned and best practice resource for other partnerships. This information will also be available on the Internet. In addition to highlighting the selected partnerships, this lessons-learned resource will include a wide variety of support information and lessons learned from other development partnerships.

Seed will announce its first ten finalists for the biennial award in October. In November, during the 3rd IUCN World Conservation Congress in Bangkok, Seed finalists will participate in workshops and gain insights on how to implement their initiatives. Seed will announce its top five inaugural award winners at the next session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in April 2005.

Seed partners include international organizations (IUCN-World Conservation Union, United Nations Environment Program, United Nations Development Program), civil society organizations (Global Public Policy Institute, Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Development Partnerships), other partnerships (Global Compact), and governments (Germany, Italy, and Norway).

For additional information please contact either Mr. Darian Stibbe of the Seed Secretariat (info@seedinit.org or +44 1865 202 669), or Ms. Susan Povenmire at the State Department (202/647-3486 or povenmiresl@state.gov).

2004/945

Released on September 7, 2004

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