The Environment Strategy of the World Bank highlights the need for mainstreaming the environment in the country assistance dialogue and programs.
The Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) is the World Bank’s main policy instrument for defining country programs and investments. The CAS indicates how the World Bank’s objective of helping countries to reduce poverty and its sectoral objectives – such as human resources development (including gender issues), environmentally sustainable development, and private sector development – are incorporated into a strategy and reflected in the policy dialogue. Each CAS presents a comprehensive picture of a country’s economic development, identifies the government’s principal concerns, and makes the case for new World Bank services. Usually, CASs are undertaken every 2 to 3 years.
The Country Assistance Strategies and the Environment work program of the Environment Department aims to facilitate the integration of environmental issues in CASs. It does so by reviewing the draft CASs from an environmental perspective and, more importantly, by providing support to the World Bank’s regional environment departments and country teams throughout the process of CAS preparation. The work program builds, critically, on Country Environmental Analysis.
In seeking to improve the treatment of environment in the CAS, the goal is not to insist on every CAS including an environmental component. Rather, there is a need for a strategic approach to the CAS itself. In cases when a country decides to focus all its efforts during the CAS period on one or two key issues (such as governance or macroeconomic stability), or when there is a heavy involvement of bilateral donors in environmental areas, it may not make sense for the World Bank’s CAS to be "greened" in a conventional manner. However, even in those cases where there is no need to highlight environmental problems and identify solutions in the CAS, it will still make sense for country teams to try to mainstream environmental concerns into other non-environment sector strategies.
The CAS and the Environment work program is carried out by the Environment Department's Policy and Economics Team. The top right box links to further information on this work program, its outputs, and related resources.
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