UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative

Within the Asia-Pacific region, the first country programme on poverty-environment mainstreaming was launched in Viet Nam in 2005 with the support then from the UNDP PEI programme. A second PEI national programme was launched in Bhutan in 2008, the first country under the joint UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative.

In late 2006, a joint UNDP-UNEP PEI regional team was formed to support the PEI scale-up process in the Asia-Pacific region that brings together staff from the UNEP Regional Office for Asia-Pacific and the UNDP Regional Centres in Bangkok and Colombo. Two regional workshops on Mainstreaming Environment for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Growth were held in March 2007 (Bhutan) and April 2008 (Thailand) which brought together UNDP and UNEP staff from regional and country offices and government officials from a range of countries with an interest in participating in the PEI regional programme. Both workshops served to identify the needs for poverty-environmental mainstreaming within the region and helped defining overall PEI programme objectives and how best to support countries in putting into practice innovative strategies for poverty-environment mainstreaming.

A third regional workshop in June 2009 (Thailand) reviewed the state of the art of lessons learnt regarding integrating environment-poverty linkages into national development planning and discussed how to further operationalise the challenges of mainstreaming in the Asia-Pacific region. A fourth regional PEI workshop in June 2010 (Lao PDR) focused discussions on opportunities and challenges of public and private investment strategies in the region and policies for pro-poor environment benefits.

As of 2011, the Asia-Pacific regional programme team is supporting five national PEI programmes in Bhutan, Bangladesh, Lao PDR, Nepal and Thailand. In addition, PEI provides substantial technical and policy advisory services to Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea as part of the UNDP environmental mainstreaming programmes in both countries and to the Philippines and Afghanistan. The programme in Vietnam officially ended in September 2009.

	Bangladesh		Bhutan		Lao PDR		Viet Nam
	Nepal		Papua New Guinea		Thailand		Timor-Leste

The regional PEI Asia team holds regular thematic regional workshops in cooperation with leading regional professional associations and networks to discuss key poverty-environment topics to assist future work and to improve cross-regional knowledge-sharing:

• In December 2007, a workshop on 'Environmental Economics for Policy Makers' was held in Bangkok/Thailand which brought together policy makers from Finance, Planning, Agriculture, Environment, Energy and other sector ministries from countries in Asia. The workshop, jointly organized with the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics , discussed broad linkages between environmental change, poverty, and economic development and explored ways how to raise best awareness among policy-makers.

• PEI Asia, in collaboration with the Economy and Environment Programme for South East Asia and the Asian Development Bank’s Greater Mekong Subregion Core Environmental Programme, organized a second regional thematic workshop on “Economic Development, Poverty Reduction and Environment and Climate Change" in September 2008 to further enhance the environment economic focus of the Poverty-Environment Initative in Asia. The workshop addressed the effect of environmental change to the health and income of the poor; the impact of climate change to the region and countries’ economy; ways to meet the Millennium Development Goals and increase benefits from natural resource use; and mechanisms to mitigate and adapt to climate change without compromising growth.

• In October 2009, the PEI Asia team discussed jointly with UNCDF and selected UN County teams and experts 'the role of local government in terms of local public expenditure, local government revenues and local government planning/regulatory/management functions'. The findings and recommendations of the workshop were released as a discussion note in 2010.

• A 'Regional Lesson Learning Workshop on Improving Public and Private Investment for Pro-Poor Environment and Climate Outcomes' held in Vientiane/Lao PDR(June 2010) reviewed country experiences and approaches in managing public and private investment for poverty reduction and sustainable natural resource management with a specific focus on decentralization and climate change aspects and helped to inform the further development of country programmes in these areas.

Paul Steele
Paul Steele from the regional UNDP Environment Practice co-manages the regional PEI Asia programme. Paul has a masters in environmental economics from the University of London. Prior to joining UNDP, Paul worked as economic and environmental advisor for the British and Sri Lankan Governments and has worked for many international organizations.

Razi Latif
Razi co-manages the regional PEI programme for UNEP.  He has a masters in Marine Resource Development and Protection from Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and a Post Graduate Diploma in Ecology from Durham University.  Prior to joining UNEP Razi worked for the European Commission in Tanzania for 6 years where he helped mainstream environment into budget and sector support and managed regional programmes in the natural resources sectors.

Mika Korkeakoski
Mika joined PEI Asia Pacific Regional Team on January 2011 as Programme Officer. Prior to joining UNEP, Mika was part of the Finland Futures Research Centre Mekong research team working as project manager and researcher for two years on Sustainable Energy projects. Moreoever, Mika has worked in Cambodia, Lao PDR, India, Nepal and Tanzania. He has a Master’s Degree in Environmental Science specializing on Development and International Cooperation.

Additional support to the PEI Asia-Pacific regional programme is provided by the following UNDP and UNEP funded staff:

Dechen Tsering
Dechen is Deputy Director of UNEP's Regional Office for Asia-Pacific and provides management and technical support to the PEI Asia regional programme.

Panida Charotok
Panida is a UNDP Programme Assistant and provides programme and financial management support for the PEI regional programme.

Jonathan Gilman
Jonathan works as UNEP Regional Coordinator on Delivering as One UN. He is an environmental economist with more than 10 years programme design and implementation experience with the United Nations, including postings in East-Timor, Indonesia and New York.

Manesh Lacoul
Manesh is a UNEP Programme Monitoring and Operations Associate supporting PEI planning, budgeting and monitoring activities.