Workshop on Country Environmental Analysis, Strategic Environmental Assessment and Development Policy Lending, January 18, 2005, World Bank, Washington, DC

Lessons from Country Environmental Analytic Work: What are the Country Environmental Analysis Tools Contributing to?

Presentations on the OECD Environment Performance Reviews, country environmental analytic work taken by Asian Development Bank and the World Bank’s experience with CEAs highlighted that these analytic products are not a “one-off” event but part of a broader process of dialogue with the government on environment and development issues. While Bank supported CEAs have some broad overarching themes, there is considerable variation in terms of focus and use of these tools. The name of the analytic work is not significant; what is important is the analytic work itself and the process of dialogue and discussion it enables. Presentations on the Serbia and Montenegro (S & M) CEA and the Tunisia CEA illustrated some of the outcomes of upstream country level environmental analytic work. For example, recommendations by the S&M CEA are well mainstreamed into the CAS (05-07). Further, a number of projects have resulted (e.g. the Serbia Danube River Enterprise Pollution Reduction Project (GEF) has been negotiated; the Serbia Energy Efficiency project is being implemented; Montenegro Environmentally Sensitive Tourism Areas project is under implementation).   In Tunisia, the CEA led to an agreement with the Government in improving the EIA system. It also led a number of institutional changes—(influenced the decision to establish a Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in October 2004; enabled the separation of solid waste management from the portfolio of the National Environmental Protection Agency).    Participants raised a number of pertinent issues relating to CEA type work including budgets, time frame, country ownership and context for doing CEAs and “rapid” CEAs.   An important issue highlighted during this session was the difficulty in raising the profile of environmental issues within development organizations and the need for cultural change not just with client countries but also within development institutions.