Sustainable development remains a key challenge for Asia and the Pacific and with recent food and fuel crisis, it is important for the region to focus on sustainable policies. The fifth Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED) Net Res Meeting at Holiday Inn today reviewed the challenges and achievements of APFED phase 2 activities and the progress made in the implementation of APFED showcase projects. It also presented participants with the APFED II Final Report, which highlights a wide range of policy recommendations to promote policy and institutional transformation and field actions towards sustainability in Asia and the Pacific. APFED is a regional group of experts that aims to address critical issues facing Asia and the Pacific and propose new models for sustainable development. Representatives from the Institute for Global Environment Strategies (IGES) and the UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) together with USP made presentations on what is being done by countries in terms of project implementations. The Dean of Faculty of Business and Economics at USP, Professor Biman Chand Prasad said the idea of this meeting is to get input from the Pacific perspective. “It provides information for better policy making -what we are looking at this forum is much more integrating policy formulation and implementation that Government can use. With the priorities that Government has placed for economic growth it can be achieved with sustainable environmental policies and this forum is trying to promote the kind of integration between good environmental and economic policies”. The Senior Administrative Officer (UNEP/ROAP), Mr Henk Verbeek said they had received over thousand proposals from 48 countries of which 47 project proposals have been selected and being implemented in the APFED Showcase Programme. “If we are to achieve ‘green earth’ then there is an urgent need for countries to be effective at all levels –individual, societal, national and global”. Some of the APFED Showcase Programme identified is: - Green Procurement in Thailand where companies switched to eco-labelled products such as recycled papers and energy efficient light bulbs. - Enhancing productivity in the utilization of bio energy in Sri Lanka with a community-managed bio-fuel plantation. - Rehabilitating desert zone ecosystems and promoting sustainable alternative livelihoods in Mongolia. USP is part of the network of research Institutes looking at environmental issues in the Asia -Pacific region. The APFED over the last 9 years has been producing reports in consultation with policy makers and researchers in the Asia-Pacific region, which have been fed into various policy forums, international environmental forums.