Greening Development: Enhancing Capacity for Environmental Management and Governance

Economic growth based on the unsustainable use of natural resources is no longer viable in a world facing the pressures of a growing population, climate change and increasing risks of food shortages. Against this background ensuring the sustainability of the natural resource base is crucial.

Moving to a greener development path requires incorporating the environment into every aspect of the national planning and budgeting process. A key obstacle for many developing countries in meeting this objective is a lack of capacity for identifying environmental challenges and priorities and their implications for development, formulating policy responses and implementing strategies. It is against this background that OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the Environment Policy Committee (EPOC) have combined their expertise to develop the report Greening Development: Enhancing Capacity for Environmental Management and Governance.

This report outlines a number of steps to be considered when building capacity for greening national development planning, national budgetary processes and key economic sector strategies. It identifies the key actors to be engaged in the decision making processes, outlines possible capacity needs and suggests how these can be addressed. The cyclical approach being advocated in the report reflects a shift from the traditional view of capacity development as a purely technical process to one that recognises the importance of country ownership at different levels in governments and society.