The Sustainable Development Issues Network (SDIN) is a collaborative effort of three large international networks - TWN, ELCI and ANPED - to form a global NGO network whose purpose is to promote good governance, and enhanced awareness and knowledge about environmental and sustainable development processes and to ensure global quality NGO participation in these global processes within the intergovernmental systems, primarily within the United Nations.

The SDIN Background

Third World Network (TWN), headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia; Environment Liaison Centre International (ELCI), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya; and ANPED, the Northern Alliance for Sustainability, headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, sharing an understood common value basis and approach to political issues concerning sustainable development and the environment, in 2001 together founded the international NGO network called SDIN, the Sustainable Development Issues Network.

The SDIN Mission

The primary area of cooperation is in facilitation of the NGO input into processes that are under the mandate of UN ECOSOC and more specifically in regard to the so-called CSD processes. More specifically SDIN works on:

• Capacity development and awareness-raising;
• Intergovernmental processes and translating global decisions to national and local plans, making the global architecture of International Environmental Governance (IEG) relevant to local actions;
• Understanding the environment, sustainable development and its interconnectedness;
• Democracy, organisational capacity, accountability and participation;
• Process understanding;
• Policy analysis;
• Lobby and strategy development and proficiency;
• Information dissemination.

The SDIN vision - a short glimpse into history