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MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will further mainstream environmental considerations into its operations through a new regional technical assistance project approved recently.

The technical assistance (TA), Mainstreaming Environment for Poverty Reduction, is financed through a $2.85 million grant from the multi-donor Poverty and Environment Fund (PEF), which has received contributions from the Swedish and Norwegian governments, and was recently replenished by Norway.

The TA will accelerate the incorporation of environmental considerations in ADB’s assistance programs and encourage expanded environmental interventions in developing countries, through support for analytical studies, pilot interventions, capacity building and knowledge management. The goal is to promote environmentally sustainable economic growth in contrast to current patterns in Asia in which the environment is being seriously degraded.

“There are immediate opportunities in our developing member countries to address environment and poverty issues simultaneously,” said Nessim Ahmad, Director, Environment and Social Safeguard Division of ADB’s Regional and Sustainable Development Department. “They can be only realized by mainstreaming consideration of the linkages between poverty and environment in more strategic ways in response to emerging development challenges such as climate change, urban pollution, natural resource degradation and vulnerability of the poor to environment-related disasters. New capacity is needed to respond to these demands.”

The TA will build upon achievements of the Poverty and Environment Program, also financed by the PEF, which has supported pilot interventions and analytical studies to collect and disseminate new knowledge on poverty-environment relationships. The new TA seeks to extend environmental mainstreaming upstream into ADB’s country planning processes as well as capacity building efforts.

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