Overview

The Global Development Challenge
The International Vision
CIDA's Strategy

The nine countries bordering the Nile River have united to manage their shared resource collectively, giving special attention to environment, watershed management, communications, energy, and institutional capacity building. Canadian companies are sharing clean production technology with industries in China and Honduras. Communities from Guyana to Senegal to Bangladesh are improving their local environment, building their capacity to adapt to climate change, and creating sustainable sources of income.

These initiatives and many more are being supported by CIDA to help its partners manage their natural resources, adopt appropriate, environmentally friendly technology, and prepare for natural disasters.

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The Global Development Challenge

Ecosystems play a decisive role in maintaining health, food security, economic growth, and social peace. Environmental sustainability-the ability of communities of plants, animals, micro-organisms, and their non-living surroundings to sustain themselves, and people, far into the future-depends on intact and healthy ecosystems. However, the natural resources that ecosystems provide-such as potable water and local food sources-have been compromised and phenomena such as climate change and natural disasters are compounding these problems.

The connection between the physical environment and survival is most direct for the poor, who contribute positively to the environment through indigenous knowledge and practices that protect natural resources:

• The poor are often the first to feel the impacts of environmental deterioration.
• Many live on marginal lands or high-risk areas that are susceptible to flooding or landslides and are vulnerable to natural disasters.
• The poor typically do not have secure rights to environmental resources.
• They have inadequate access to information and expertise, which limits their capacity to protect their environment and improve their livelihoods and well-being.
• Many are often forced to use natural resources beyond sustainable levels in order to survive, thus leading to environmental degradation and deepening their poverty.
• Women, the world's main food producers and fuel and water collectors, are especially affected by environmental deterioration and lack of rights to land tenure and control over resources.

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The International Vision

The international community has been collaborating to preserve the environment for more than 30 years. Canada played a major role in negotiating a number of important international agreements, including:

• the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol;
• the UN Convention to Combat Desertification
• the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; and
• the Convention on Biological Diversity.

As a party to these conventions, Canada also helps developing country partners implement them. Ensuring environmental sustainability is one of the Millennium Development Goals) (Goal 7). It is also fundamental to achieving the other goals. These agreements underscore the connection between poverty, equity, and environmental sustainability and the need for countries to work together to address global environmental issues.

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CIDA's Strategy

Canada has identified environmental sustainability as a programming priority in Canada's development cooperation program.

Environment is also systematically integrated into all aspects of its development work. CIDA's approach is to help its partner countries create, maintain, and enhance environmental sustainability, particularly in relation to:

• climate change: including emissions reduction, protection of carbon-absorbing vegetation, and adaptation to climate change;
• land degradation: including improved natural resource management, land rehabilitation, and conservation through local participation, and increased access by women to land, credit, and training/information;
• freshwater and sanitation: including water and sanitation programs developed and implemented by the poor, with increased participation by women, and strengthened institutions that govern water resource management; and
• urbanization: including improved access to essential services such as water and sanitation for the urban poor, and to clean technology.

CIDA will also work to strengthen global environmental agreements and build the capacity of its partners to implement them. In addition, CIDA will continue to implement its legal obligations under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the 1999 Cabinet Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment to help ensure that environmental considerations remain a fundamental aspect of development work undertaken by the Agency and its development partners.

Equality Between Women and Men is integrated into all activities supporting environmental sustainability to ensure that women have equal access to resources and to decision making.