Accelerating Gender Equality in East Asia for an Inclusive and Green Recovery

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is funding the regional knowledge and support technical assistance (TA) to help the People’s Republic of China and Mongolia develop options for promoting a gender-inclusive and green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of this TA is to introduce the concepts of circular economy through assessments and to design and implement the capacity development programme for selected micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in focal industries. Thus, the TA will have the following outcome:

• Knowledge on and capacity for gender-inclusive and green recovery will be applied and will help women-owned or women-led MSMEs in Mongolia to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and focus on a green and resilient recovery
• In its scope, the project will conduct a comprehensive assessment of opportunities, barriers, levers, and entry points for operationalising circular economy approaches with a particular focus on the food and packaging industrial sector and in the context of the tourism industry in Mongolia
• This TA will also promote developing and implementing the circular economy capacity building programme for MSMEs. Specific considerations include capacity building training for at least 350 MSMEs owned/led by women, conducting assessment of impacts/increased recovery capacity of entrepreneurs, and developing and implementing at least 15 innovative business solutions for pollution control, resource efficiency, or green transformation approaches
• In addition, knowledge products (guidelines, manuals, assessments, reports) will be prepared and national and international events such as policy dialogues will be organised

This TA was awarded to the Independent Research Institute of Mongolia (IRIM) and the TA team consists of experts from IRIM, Mongolian Sustainable Finance Association (ToC), adelphi consult GmbH, and Development Solutions NGO (DS).