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p. 41 of 57 BACK | NEXT I. The Changing Environment II. Driving Forces of Change III. Options and Opportunities IV. Toward Policy Integration Mounting Pressure for Policy Responses Policy Integration Entry Points for Policy Integration Managing Economic Fundamentals Intrasectoral Policy Integration Intersectoral Policy Integration International Trade and Investment Governance A Framework for Policy Integration Toward an Action Agenda V. Call to Action

Asian Environment Outlook 2001 : IV. Toward Policy Integration

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Intersectoral Policy Integration

Intersectoral policy integration is the creation of institutional arrangements that allow for comprehensive economic and environmental planning at the national and subnational scales. In most cases, the primary drivers of environmental change as well as the opportunities for policy intervention lie outside the jurisdiction of any single agency or organization. Intersectoral policy integration seeks to overcome the endemic fragmentation of policy response that undermines efforts to jointly improve economic and environmental performance within the region.

Inherently, economic development involves a range of economic and ecosystem services. For this reason, there are limits to what can be achieved through policy integration within individual sectors. Co-optimization of economic and environmental goals also requires intersectoral integration.

Efforts to improve ambient urban environmental quality require integrated management of all sources of pollution, including factories, power plants, households, and transportation. The costs of reducing emissions are likely to vary across sources. For example, fuel switching in electricity generation may be a more cost-effective approach to reducing particulate emissions than forcing closure of inefficient industrial factories. Relocating factories to peripheral industrial estates and away from residential areas and from areas that lack adequate waste management infrastructure may be more cost-effective than introducing higher waste charges. One approach to the need for integrated analysis of multiple distinct sources is the creation of regional and urban integrated environmental management units.

In rural areas, similar pressures exist for cross-sector resource management, especially with respect to water usage. Competition among residential, industrial, urban, rural, upstream, and downstream users is taking on critical proportions in many DMCs. Competition for water is magnified by issues of declining water quality. Integrated river basin management can offer an effective institutional model for intersectoral policy integration. Many effective river basin management models are in operation around the world, providing the basis for integrated water resource management as part of national plans for water demand and supply.

Managing demand for resources and ecosystem services is perhaps the key imperative of intersectoral policy integration (see Box 4-4). In agriculture, this involves reducing the demand for water for irrigation. In both urban and rural areas, it involves controlling the rate of growth in demand for carbon-based sources of energy. In urban areas, it involves controlling the demand for waste disposal and other environmental infrastructure services, including transportation. Urban planning should be based on the premise that employment generators (factories, offices, utilities) should be optimally located in relation to their inputs and outputs. Industrial estates should consider co-location of industries that can use each others' waste outputs as inputs. Similarly, water pipes, utility pipes and cables, and telecommunications cables should be co-located in service trenches, thus avoiding the constant digging up of roads and footpaths as agencies decide to expand or repair networks.

Population and employment are two additional areas of considerable opportunity for intersectoral policy integration. Although the sheer scale of population growth in urban areas has produced severe environmental problems, it is fair to say that the greatest problems have resulted from the unplanned and unmanaged character of such urban growth. Social welfare goals may best be pursued through a shift toward an urban-based economy, but when rapid urban growth occurs with inadequate planning and control, there is little opportunity to address attendant environmental and economic concerns. Uncontrolled low-income residential areas (typically in urban slums) create major problems in terms of access to employment in the formal economy. The economic and environmental effects of uncontrolled rural to urban migration require integrated rural and urban development strategies, including a strong focus on the creation of economically and environmentally sustainable livelihoods in rural areas.

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