Environment

Environment Policy

The New Policy

The Board of Directors' approved the Environment Policy R-Paper on 8 November 2002. The Environment Policy represents the culmination of two years of extensive consultations with internal and external stakeholders, including a Board seminar, country workshops, and several rounds of inter-departmental review. It also incorporates comments and suggestions made by Board members during the Board discussion of the Environment Policy working paper in April 2002.

The Environment Policy has been prepared to address five main challenges:

1. the need for environmental interventions to reduce poverty
2. the need to mainstream environmental considerations into economic growth and development planning
3. the need to maintain regional and global life support systems
4. the need to work in partnership with others
5. the need to further strengthen the processes and procedures for addressing environmental concerns in ADB’s own operations

The Policy highlights a number of areas that require attention in ADB’s environmental assessment process. It addresses the need for more upstream environmental assessment at the level of country programming, the need for more structured consultation in the conduct of environmental assessments, the need for greater emphasis on monitoring and compliance with environmental requirements during project implementation, and finally the need to view environmental assessment as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event.

The Consultation Process in Member Countries

From February to December 2001, ADB engaged all stakeholders in formulating the Environment Policy. Learn about our consultation process. We targeted stakeholder groups (representing government, non-government, private sector and academe) in 18 developing and 7 developed member countries. 22 national and regional workshops were held (see schedule). Learn about the participants.

The Results of Consultation

We received 632 sets of comments to the draft policy paper and have incorporated them into the revised working paper as appropriate. See what others said about the overview document and draft working paper.