Poverty-Environment Action builds on the deep experience of the UNDP-UN Environment Poverty-Environment Initiative. Over the past decade, the Initiative has pioneered integrated approaches to mainstreaming poverty-environment linkages in national development planning and implementation processes and now as a model for implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. By building on Poverty-Environment Initiative's legacy, Poverty-Environment Action is uniquely placed to ensure that the environmental dimension is not left behind when addressing poverty. The new focus of Poverty-Environment Action is aligning finance and investment with poverty, environment and climate objectives to accelerate SDG implementation.

Poverty-Environment Action programming will follow a two-pronged strategy of deepening and broadening support to countries on poverty-environment mainstreaming: - Deepen mainstreaming efforts to integrate environmental sustainability and climate objectives for poverty eradication into development planning, budgeting and monitoring systems with an emphasis on alignment and policy coherence (Output 1) and in line with the new focus of Poverty-Environment Action into public and private finance and investment management systems (Output 2) - Broaden the dissemination and use of the project's substantial body of country-level experience in the application of integrated poverty-environment mainstreaming approaches and tools through stepped-up efforts in knowledge management and sharing, including through South-South knowledge transfer and cooperation, and proactive engagement with key global and regional actors supporting national SDG implementation and acceleration processes (Output 3 in support of Outputs 1 and 2) The target for deepening will be eight countries (four in Africa and four in Asia-Pacific) where substantive gains were made through Poverty-Environment Initiative and with high potential to deliver the shift in investments expected from Poverty-Environment Action. The initial list of proposed countries comprises Bangladesh, Lao PDR, Malawi, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal and Rwanda. To support an enabling environment for partnerships to effectively contribute to national SDG implementation, the project will expand its collaboration with the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Green Economy Coalition in their political economy research and to promote multi-stakeholder dialogue processes focusing on poverty-environment mainstreaming which engage civil society and the private sector through a bottom-up approach. Poverty-Environment Action will build on earlier Poverty-Environment Initiative collaboration with organizations engaged in promoting the transition to an inclusive green economy, including current efforts to jointly construct a best practice framework and in-country delivery model for avoiding duplication and enhancing programming collaboration and synergies. Going forward, key engagements include the following: - Partnership for Action on Green Economy: assessment and strategies with respect to green economy (UN Environment); green jobs (International Labour Organization); green industry (United Nations Industrial Development Organization); training, networking and learning (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) - European Union SWITCH regional programmes in Asia and Africa - Green Economy Coalition - International Institute for Environment and Development - GIZ - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - Green Growth Knowledge Platform: knowledge hub, link to global experts, data and analysis - UN Environment Finance Initiative - Global Green Growth Institute

The project's Output 3 focuses on enhancing the spread (in support of the Poverty-Environment Action broadening strategy) and effectiveness (in support of Outputs 1 and 2) of poverty-environment mainstreaming by better capturing, assessing and documenting good practices, by linking with ongoing work of key global and regional actors supporting national SDG implementation and acceleration processes (e.g. national SDG platforms, regional SDG knowledge exchanges), and through South-South cooperation. Under Key Deliverable 3.2, the project will conduct a series of South-South cooperation/learning and capacity-building events on major poverty-environment mainstreaming themes in response to priority demand from Poverty-Environment Action countries and supporting the broadening strategy.

The Poverty-Environment Action governance will comprise a joint UNDP--UN Environment project team overseen by a Joint Project Management Board. UNDP and UN Environment will field the project Co-Managers as well as thematic experts based in the respective Regional Offices who will provide technical guidance to Poverty-Environment Action as needed. Dedicated knowledge management capacity will form part of the global project team. At the country level, the project will be fully embedded in the UN Country Teams and implemented through the relevant UNDP Country Offices in close partnership with local donor representations. The Project Board is responsible for taking final management decisions and approvals where guidance is required by the project team or Poverty-Environment Action joint project co-managers, including approvals for all project-funded staffing decisions, annual allocations based on available resources, project annual work plans/related revisions and approval of all progress reports and publications.

United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme, Poverty Environment Partnership