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I. The Changing Environment
II. Driving Forces of Change
III. Options and Opportunities
IV. Toward Policy Integration
>>V. Call to Action
Regional Policy Recommendations
Sector-specific Actions
Conclusions
Asian Environment Outlook 2001

V. Call to Action

Opportunities are available to institutionalize sustainable development in the Asia and Pacific region – the type of development that is economically sustainable, environmentally sound, socially equitable, and responsive to a shared vision among the community of nations.

The call to action is directed at the Asia and Pacific region decision makers, whose input to this report represents a consensus view on priority actions that need to be taken. This consensus on actions has been achieved through discussion and assessment by a diverse group of DMC government officials, staff from ADB and other international assistance agencies, representatives of NGOs and research institutions, and the private sector. The consensus-reaching process included a series of workshops in eight DMCs. At these workshops, sectoral policy agendas were developed and reviewed by national experts to identify root causes that are inhibiting environmental progress in some countries. Workshops and participants are listed in the appendix of this report. Common themes emerged across the region, especially the need for policy integration, development by design, and a political and social will for pro-environmental actions. The need for new approaches is particularly relevant because past actions in the region have demonstrably constrained development sustainability. The AEO Series is a work in progress. As such, general and specific policy recommendations and actions proposed here in the AEO 2001 report are generic and evolving. The call to action is a baseline against which future progress will be measured in subsequent AEO reports, and implemented in the region with the assistance of the development partners, including ADB.

As illustrated in this report, opportunities are available to institutionalize sustainable development in the Asia and Pacific region – the type of development that is economically sustainable, environmentally sound, socially equitable, and responsive to a shared vision among the community of nations. If catalyzed by strong political will and a reflection of social preferences, the vision for the future would encompass policies that integrate environment into development with the aim of achieving an appropriate level of environmental compliance, protecting the poor against environmental mismanagement, and commitment of budgets and human resources commensurate with environmental management requirements (see Box 5-1).

Box 5-1. Vision for the Future

ADB’s long-term strategic framework for 2001 through 2015 draws attention to the following realities:

“The Asia and Pacific region is still home to two-thirds of the world’s poor despite the significant progress in the past three decades. A lesson learned from the 1997 Asian crisis is that even gains made in poverty reduction through long years of rapid and sustained growth can be quickly reversed. The challenge of reducing poverty in the region remains more daunting than ever and requires new approaches and commitments.”

The three core areas of intervention, consonant with the poverty reduction strategy:

  • Sustainable economic growth, which covers broad-based growth-promoting activities, including investments in both physical and social infrastructure, and an environment program that promotes environmentally sound development;

  • Inclusive social development, which includes investments in social support programs and a policy and reform agenda that will promote equity and empowerment, especially for women and disadvantaged groups; and

  • Governance for effective policies and institutions, which includes support for public sector management at all levels; legal and judicial reform; and improving public accountability. Governance must also promote processes and proce-dures for more effective participation in decision making to promote equitable and inclusive growth, especially by civil society.

The three core areas will be complemented by three crosscutting themes that will both broaden and deepen the impact of the core areas of intervention:

  • Promoting the role of the private sector in development builds on the private sector development strategy, recognizes the central role of the private sector and of markets in the development process, and responds to the challenges of mobilizing private sector resources to address the region’s increasingly complex development agenda;

  • Supporting regional cooperation and integration for development reflects the need to support the development of DMCs through cooperation, to provide wider development options through greater access to resources and markets, to address shared problems that stretch across borders, and to take advantage of opportunities for sharing knowledge and information; and

  • Addressing environmental sustainability includes putting environmental considerations in the forefront of all develop-ment decision making and planning in the DMCs and in all ADB initiatives, and not only stopping but reversing the enormous and costly degradation and damage to the environment that have already occurred.


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