The experience of integrating environment into development institutions and decisions

During 2007-2009, CANARI partnered with the International Institute for Environment and Development on an initiative to produce a User Guide to Environmental Mainstreaming, covering strategies, tools and tactics for mainstreaming (or integrating) environment into development decision-making and institutions. The initial aim was to develop a guide to a range of approaches and tools/methods for environmental mainstreaming applied at different levels (e.g. national, district, community) and by a range of users (government, non-governmental and community-based organisations, businesses and private sector organisations) and organisations like CANARI collected feedback from users in their regions or countries. The reports on the findings from the Caribbean can be found on the project website at http://www.environmental-mainstreaming.org/Country%20Surveys/cs_carribean.html

The main lesson from the country survey work was that respondents were more exercised on issues of context – the mainstream drivers of change, the constraints to influencing them, and the associated political and institutional challenges – than the technical pros and cons of individual tools. As a result, the original intention of identifying the most favoured approaches/tools has now being supplemented by an IIED issues paper entitled ‘The Challenges of Environmental Mainstreaming’ which can be found at the project website at http://www.environmental-mainstreaming.org/documents/Synthesis%20report%20-%20published%20pdf.pdf

CANARI and IIED would welcome any feedback – to Kwesi Dennis kwesi@canari.org - from readers in the Caribbean on either of the documents highlighted above.

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