Putting Partnerships at the Forefront of Environmental Training in China

Responding to client demand
China faces severe pollution and resource depletion problems. For example, air and water pollution damages were estimated to cost as much as 8 percent of its national GDP in 1995. To overcome these problems, the State Environmental Protection Administration of China (SEPA) approached the World Bank in 1997 to seek the Bank's assistance in strengthening environmental training in China. In response to this request, the World Bank Institute (WBI) and SEPA jointly launched a Multi-year Environmental Training Program in China in 1998.

The program now involves nearly every key player in China responsible for environmental training. It offers a menu of training courses and other learning activities each year to hundreds of Chinese officials, students, and members of civil society nationwide.

Designing a long-term program

The first phase of the program laid the foundation by developing training content and materials, carrying out training-of-trainer (TOT) activities, creating professional networks, and building strong relationships and partnerships. Starting in 1998, four training-of-trainer courses on environmental economics, policy analysis and project preparation provided learning opportunities to 160 Chinese professionals and connected them through a network.

Building on this foundation and momentum, the second phase has focused on assisting local training partners in their demand-driven training activities through the provision of training materials, professional networks, websites, and distance learning (DL) approaches. The activities include strengthening partners' training capacity, raising environmental awareness of Chinese officials including senior officials and members of the People's Congress, and delivering courses through partnerships and professional networks.

The program now offers three core sets of training courses - sustainable urban development and management, environmental economics and policy, and project analysis and management. For instance, the sustainable urban development and management course was designed by more than 50 local and international experts and has been delivered primarily through distance learning. In 2001 alone, the course was offered in Beijing, Chengdu, Hefei, Yinchuan and other Chinese cities for about 500 city officials. The program also trained 80 local facilitators for further disseminating the course nationwide.

The program is now entering a more mature phase in which WBI and its Chinese partners are modifying, expanding, and adapting the courses and materials already developed to meet new needs, and are continuing to scale-up delivery of existing programs.

Developing effective partnerships
Building on a modest initial investment by the Bank, the program has successfully leveraged a significant amount of inputs from its partners and has been able to scale up its impacts largely through these partners. Local partners now deliver most of the program and enlist the help of facilitators trained by the program, with little financial support from the Bank. For example, the sustainable urban development and management course is being delivered in many cities by the China National School of Administration (CNSA). The environmental economics and policy course is delivered regularly at major Chinese universities by professors trained by the program's earlier TOT and other courses. The project analysis and management course is offered by a consulting firm, again through staff trained by the program, in collaboration with World Bank project management offices.

Besides CNSA, local partners have included: numerous local schools of administration at provincial and municipal levels; SEPA and its subordinate centers; the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of National People's Congress of China (NPC); the China Academy of Advanced Official Training; major Chinese universities; and the Beijing Engineering Consulting Company (BECC).

The program is also the result of collaboration among World Bank units. External partners are also important; the Program has been or is working with the World Wildlife Fund, World Resources Institute, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Canadian International Development Agency, and the program offices in China of the Governments of Italy and Japan and the European Union.

Contacts
For information on the China program, go to WBI's Environmental Economics & Management website at: http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/sdenveconomics/index.html
Prepared by Jian Xie and John Dixon of the World Bank Institute, in collaboration with Ronald Kim of the Knowledge Sharing Unit.