POVERTY: The Poverty-Environment Initiative

The Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is a global UN-led programme that supports country-led efforts to mainstream poverty-environment linkages into national development planning. The PEI provides financial and technical assistance to government partners to set up institutional and capacity strengthening programmes and carry out activities to address the particular poverty-environment context. For more information, please visit: www.unpei.org. The provision of knowledge resources and services and its promotion is one of the main roles of the Poverty-Environment Initiative and its Annual Progress Report offers valuable lessons learnt and information for development practitioners interested in poverty and environment mainstreaming efforts.
The Annual Progress Report 2009 provides a comprehensive overview of PEI’s activities and achievements to date at the country level. The report highlights continuous lesson learning at country level, delivering on transformative targets, supporting the evolution of the PEI programmatic approach, living with climate change adaptation and measuring the longer-term impact of PEI. Comprehensive country fact sheets for on-going country programmes and the ones under preparation are included as annexes for easy information.The main part of the report presents the various achievements at country level, thereby reviewing:(1) Increased awareness and understanding of poverty-environment issues and capacities for mainstreaming;(2) Generation of country-specific evidence on the contribution of the environment to pro-poor economic growth and human well-being;(3) Environmental sustainability included as priority objective or outcomes in national planning processes;(4) Inclusion of poverty-environment indicators into policy documents and monitoring systems;(5) Increased budget allocation for poverty-environment measures; and(6) Improved integration of poverty-environment linkages into joint UN programming processes at country level.
The report is available at: http://www.unpei.org/PDF/PEI-annualprogress-report2009.pdf
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