Description

Rapid economic development and years of neglect of environmental protection in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) resulted in severe environmental degradation in the forms of heavy pollution, deforestation, and soil erosion. Against this background, a priority area for Asian Development Bank (ADB) assistance in the PRC, since it joined ADB in 1986, has been the provision of technical assistance (TA) in environmental management and capacity building.

Seven advistory TAs were selected for evaluation in this technical assistance performance audit report. The TAs generally shared the same objective—to improve environmental management and/or to build capacity—but with very diverse scope, covering all the key approaches to and aspects of environmental management and capacity building, i.e., standards and laws, enforcement and implementation, planning and financing, market-based instruments/policies, institutional training, and cleaner technology, at both central and local (provincial or municipal) levels.