The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) put environmental sustainability at the center of sustainable development. However, meaningful action to achieve environmental goals and targets—such as SDGs 12 on Responsible Consumption and Production, 14 on Life below Water and 15 on Life on Land—requires significant strengthening of national responses to meet them. This means that policy makers need to integrate the environmental dimensions of the SDGs into development policies, plans, programs, budgets, and investments. Rather than leaving environment ministries or agencies to address environmental goals and targets on their own, ministries and agencies across the government must work together to understand the impact of their policies on them and, subsequently, to achieve them.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), as part of its technical assistance project Supporting Implementation of Environment-Related SDGs in Asia and the Pacific, partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to compile tools that policy makers and government officials can use to apply integrated approaches to development policies, plans, programs, budgeting and investment management.
This tool compendium includes tools developed by the Poverty-Environment Initiative, a joint global program of UNDP and UN Environment that supported governments to mainstream poverty and environment objectives into national planning, budgeting, and investment processes. It also includes many more tools developed by ADB, United Nations agencies, and other development partners.