Sustainable development strategies : a resource book

- The nature of sustainable development strategies and current practice- Key steps in starting, managing and improving sustainable development strategies- Analysis of and for sustainable development- Participation for sustainable development- Information, education and communications- Strategy decision-making frameworks and procedures- The financial basis for strategies- Monitoring and evaluation systems Includes free CD-Rom of full text and extensive related material.

Acknowledgements	p. v
Contents	p. ix
List of figures, tables and boxes	p. xvi
Preface	p. xxii
Acronyms and abbreviations	p. xxiii
1 About the resource book	p. 1
Aims	p. 1
Target audience	p. 2
Layout	p. 2
How to use this resource book	p. 4
2 Sustainable development and the need for strategic responses	p. 5
The opportunity for a strategic approach to national development	p. 5
Organization of this chapter	p. 6
The challenges of environment and development	p. 7
Trends and major challenges	p. 7
Economic disparity and political instability	p. 7
Extreme poverty	p. 8
Under-nourishment	p. 8
Disease	p. 8
Marginalization	p. 8
Population growth	p. 8
Consumption	p. 8
Global energy use	p. 9
Climate change	p. 9
Nitrogen loading	p. 9
Natural resource deterioration	p. 9
Loss of diversity	p. 10
Pollution	p. 10
Growing water scarcity	p. 10
Other urban problems	p. 10
Interactions between social, economic and environmental problems	p. 10
International responses to the challenges of sustainable development	p. 11
The emergence of sustainable development as a common vision	p. 11
Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs)	p. 14
Environmental monitoring and assessment	p. 15
Economic instruments	p. 15
Engaging the private sector	p. 16
New technologies	p. 17
Financing sustainable development	p. 18
Governance--and the twin trends of decentralization and globalization	p. 18
Decentralization	p. 20
Globalization	p. 22
Focus on national strategies for sustainable development: a Rio commitment and one of the seven international development goals	p. 23
Guidance to date on strategies for sustainable development	p. 25
Why a strategic approach to sustainable development is needed	p. 27
The need for structural changes	p. 27
Difficulties in introducing changes	p. 28
What being strategic means	p. 28
3 The nature of sustainable development strategies and current practice	p. 30
Introduction	p. 30
What are sustainable development strategies?	p. 31
Key principles for developing sustainable development strategies	p. 33
Learning from current practice: existing strategy frameworks	p. 35
Building on national level strategies	p. 38
National development plans	p. 38
Sector and cross-sectoral plans and strategies	p. 42
Plans and strategies related to conventions	p. 42
National forest programmes (NFPs)	p. 47
National conservation strategies (NCSs)	p. 50
National environmental action plans (NEAPs)	p. 50
National Agenda 21s and National Councils for Sustainable Development	p. 52
National visions	p. 53
Comprehensive development frameworks	p. 54
Poverty reduction strategies	p. 56
Sub-national strategies	p. 63
Decentralized development planning	p. 66
Village and micro-level strategies	p. 66
Convergence and links between national, sub-national and local strategies	p. 69
Regional approaches to developing strategies	p. 70
4 Key steps in starting or improving strategies for sustainable development	p. 74
Harnessing effective strategic mechanisms in a continual-improvement system	p. 74
Scoping exercise	p. 77
Establishing or strengthening a strategy secretariat or coordinating body	p. 77
Establishing or strengthening a strategy steering committee or equivalent forum	p. 81
Seeking or improving political commitment for the strategy	p. 82
Establishing or confirming a mandate for the strategy	p. 85
Ensuring broad ownership of the strategy	p. 85
Securing strategy 'ownership' and commitment by all ministries	p. 87
Securing strategy 'ownership' and commitment by civil society and the private sector	p. 88
Mobilizing the required resources	p. 90
Harnessing the necessary skills	p. 91
Bringing institutions and individuals on board	p. 93
Raising the financial resources	p. 94
Identifying stakeholders and defining their roles in the strategy	p. 96
Typical roles of the main actors in strategy processes, and constraints faced	p. 98
Politicians and leaders	p. 98
Public authorities	p. 98
The private sector	p. 99
Civil society	p. 100
Donor agencies	p. 100
Mapping out the strategy process, taking stock of existing strategies and other planning processes	p. 102
Seeking to improve coherence and coordination between strategy frameworks at all levels	p. 104
Coherence, coordination (and convergence) of national strategic frameworks	p. 104
Focusing strategic objectives at the right level-from regional to local, and between sectors-and ensuring coherence and coordination there	p. 105
Establishing and agreeing ground rules governing strategy procedures	p. 110
Establishing a schedule and calendar for the strategy process	p. 112
Promoting the strategy	p. 112
The role of experiments and pilot projects	p. 112
Establishing and improving the regular strategy mechanisms and processes	p. 113
5 Analysis	p. 114
Approaching and organizing the tasks of analysis	p. 114
Introducing the main analytical tasks in NSDS processes	p. 114
Challenges in analysis for sustainable development strategies	p. 115
Effective strategies depend on sound information	p. 115
Sustainable development is complex and difficult to analyse	p. 115
Capacities to analyse sustainable development are often weak	p. 115
There are dangers in relying on narrow, non-local, out-of-date or unreliable information	p. 116
Basic principles for analysis	p. 116
Engage and inform stakeholders within democratic and participatory processes	p. 116
Use accessible and participatory methods of analysis	p. 117
Include roles for independent, 'expert' analysis	p. 117
Develop a continuing, coordinated system of knowledge generation	p. 118
Agree criteria for prioritizing analysis	p. 118
Ensure the objectives of the analysis are clear	p. 119
Agree the types of output from the analysis, and who will get them	p. 120
An introduction to methods available for analysis	p. 120
Analysing stakeholders in sustainable development	p. 120
Why stakeholder analysis is important	p. 120
Identifying stakeholders	p. 124
Using an issues-based typology	p. 124
Ways to identify stakeholders	p. 125
Stakeholder representation	p. 125
Identifying stakeholder interests, relations and powers	p. 126
Identifying stakeholders' interests	p. 126
Analysing the relationships between stakeholders	p. 127
Analysing stakeholders' powers	p. 127
Comparing stakeholders' powers with their potential for sustainable development	p. 129
Limitations of stakeholder analysis	p. 130
Approaches to measuring and analysing sustainability	p. 132
Accounts	p. 133
Narrative assessments	p. 135
Indicator-based assessments	p. 135
Contributing measurements and analyses	p. 138
Spatial analysis	p. 138
System of national accounts	p. 141
Genuine domestic savings	p. 142
Ecological footprint	p. 142
Natural resource, materials and energy accounts	p. 144
Human Development Index	p. 145
Sustainable livelihoods analysis	p. 145
Policy influence mapping	p. 148
Problem trees and causal diagrams	p. 148
Strategic environmental assessment	p. 149
Community-based issue analysis	p. 153
Deciding what to measure: a framework of parts and aims	p. 154
Deciding how to measure: choosing indicators	p. 158
Seeing the big sustainability picture: generating indices	p. 159
Identifying priority sustainability issues: using a rigorous, routine system	p. 160
Analysing sustainable development mechanisms and processes	p. 161
Steps in analysing the component mechanisms	p. 162
Analysing the legal framework for sustainable development	p. 162
Analysing the economic context	p. 169
Describing how the mechanisms link up	p. 170
Scenario development	p. 171
The purpose and limitations of scenarios	p. 171
Organizing scenario development	p. 171
Some illustrations of sustainable development scenarios	p. 173
6 Participation in strategies for sustainable development	p. 177
Introduction	p. 177
Understanding participation	p. 178
Multiple perceptions, expectations and definitions of 'participation'	p. 178
Typologies of participation-and associated dilemmas	p. 178
'Horizontal' and 'vertical' channels for participation-and associated dilemmas	p. 182
Why participation is needed in strategies for sustainable development	p. 186
Ensuring effective participation-issues and planning requirements	p. 193
Scoping the basic requirements	p. 193
Consideration of costs and benefits of participation	p. 193
Clarity of expectations	p. 193
Consideration of scale and links	p. 197
Representation, selection and intermediaries	p. 198
Infrastructure, organization and legal framework for participation	p. 201
Planning for participation in strategies	p. 204
Methods for participation in strategies	p. 207
Participatory learning and action	p. 207
Community-based resource planning and management	p. 211
Participation in decentralized planning systems	p. 211
Multi-stakeholder partnerships	p. 213
Focusing on consensus, negotiations and conflict resolution	p. 217
Working in groups	p. 218
Facilitation	p. 220
Participants' responsibilities	p. 222
Rapporteurs	p. 222
Meeting agendas	p. 222
Market research, electronic media and other remote methods	p. 225
7 Communications	p. 226
Introduction	p. 226
Shifting values, attitudes and styles	p. 227
Establishing a communications and information strategy and system	p. 230
An information, education and communications strategy and action plan	p. 233
Coordination of information	p. 234
Internal coordination-focus on creating a shared information base	p. 235
External coordination-using a wide range of methods	p. 235
Choosing the medium, and developing complementary information products	p. 236
Documents and audio-visual material	p. 238
Events	p. 240
Managing dialogue and consensus-building during meetings	p. 242
Establishing networks, or making links with existing networks	p. 242
Establishing databases, or making links with existing databases	p. 245
Use of electronic media	p. 246
Electronic democracy	p. 247
Mass media	p. 249
Monitoring the communication process	p. 250
8 Strategy decision-making	p. 253
The scope of strategy decisions	p. 253
Strategic vision	p. 254
Strategic objectives	p. 254
Targets	p. 254
Triggers	p. 254
Action plan	p. 255
Institutional plan	p. 255
Challenges, principles and useful frameworks for making strategy decisions	p. 258
Challenges for decision-making	p. 258
Getting a good grasp of the problems being faced	p. 258
Dealing with a wide range of integration and trade-off challenges	p. 258
Dealing with 'real-world' issues and avoiding 'planners' dreams'	p. 259
Achieving consensus on the vast range of sustainable development issues	p. 261
Principles and frameworks for decision-making	p. 261
Good decisions should be based on acknowledged values	p. 261
Strategy decisions should reflect locally-accepted values	p. 262
Strategy decisions should reflect global values	p. 263
Strategy decisions should reflect risk and uncertainty	p. 265
Formal methodologies for decision-making can help, but have limitations	p. 265
Decision theory	p. 265
Decision support tools	p. 267
'Strong' and 'weak' sustainability	p. 269
Institutional roles and processes for strategy decisions	p. 270
Multi-stakeholder structures for decision-making	p. 270
Facilitating decision-making through workshops	p. 272
Consensus	p. 272
Negotiations and conflict resolution	p. 276
Negotiations	p. 276
Conflict resolution	p. 280
Policy coherence-a step-wise approach	p. 280
A challenge: strengthening relations between decision-developers and the ultimate decision-takers	p. 282
Selecting instruments for implementing strategy decisions	p. 283
The range of sustainable development instruments	p. 284
Legislative/regulatory/juridical instruments	p. 284
Financial/market instruments	p. 285
Educational/informational instruments	p. 286
Institutional instruments	p. 286
Guidance on selecting instruments	p. 287
9 The financial basis for strategies	p. 288
Introduction	p. 288
Mobilizing finance	p. 290
Financial requirements of the strategy	p. 290
Formulation and review	p. 290
Implementation	p. 292
Sources of finance	p. 292
Donor finance	p. 292
Government	p. 293
Other in-country sources of finance	p. 293
International transfer payments	p. 294
Global Environmental Facility	p. 294
Carbon offsets and the Clean Development Mechanism	p. 295
Debt swaps	p. 295
National environmental funds	p. 296
Trust funds	p. 296
Mobilizing finance at the local level	p. 297
Using market mechanisms to create incentives for sustainable development	p. 298
Market mechanisms at the national level	p. 299
Removing perverse incentives	p. 299
Adapting existing market mechanisms	p. 300
New market mechanisms	p. 300
Market mechanisms at the local level	p. 302
Mainstreaming sustainable development into investment and financial decision-making	p. 303
Motives for addressing sustainable development	p. 303
Company level	p. 304
The business case from the financial institution viewpoint	p. 305
Crucial factors in the business case	p. 306
How can financial institutions mainstream sustainable development?	p. 306
Challenges for Northern financial institutions	p. 306
Challenges for national finance and investment institutions	p. 307
10 Monitoring and evaluation systems	p. 309
Introduction	p. 309
Elements of a monitoring and evaluation system	p. 309
Principles of successful monitoring and evaluation	p. 310
Who should undertake monitoring and evaluation?	p. 311
Formal internal and external monitoring	p. 311
Internally-driven monitoring (conducted by local strategy stake-holders)	p. 311
Externally-driven monitoring and evaluation (conducted by agreed independent bodies or donors)	p. 313
Linking internal and external monitoring	p. 314
Participatory monitoring and evaluation	p. 315
When should monitoring and evaluation be undertaken?	p. 318
The 'pressure-state-response' framework for monitoring-its utility and limitations	p. 318
Use in state-of-the-environment reporting	p. 318
Use and limitations for monitoring sustainable development	p. 320
Monitoring the implementation of the strategy and ensuring accountability	p. 321
Monitoring the performance of strategy stakeholders, and mutual accountability	p. 322
Monitoring and evaluating the results of the strategy	p. 324
Disseminating the findings of monitoring exercises and feedback to strategy decisions	p. 325
Appendix	p. 327
References	p. 331
Index	p. 348

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