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Project Steering Committee Meeting II
The Second Project Steering Committee Meeting was organized
with three main objectives.
- To review the progress of the project reported by the
project secretariat, international consultants, and the
six national teams on the National Environmental Performance
Assessment (EPA) and other related activities
- To discuss and firm up the revised project work plan
and outputs
- To discuss the project next steps on Sub regional EPA
and the GMS Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI)
The meeting was held on 14 March 2005 at the Victoria Hotel,
Siem Reap, Cambodia. The meeting was addressed by H. E. Mr.
Tan Vutha, Secretary of State, Ministry of Environment, Cambodia.
There were 25 participants from the project secretariat, international
consultants, and six national teams.
The committee has provided comments and suggestions which
are as follows:
- The National EPA reports need to be further reviewed
and revised by coordinating efforts of international consultants
and national teams in order to produce good quality reports
with concrete recommendations.
- The committee agreed to add climate change as an environmental
concern in the National EPA.
- National teams are requested to re-orient their case studies
to meet the GEF requirements.
- Contribution from collaborative partners was discussed.
- Expected outputs of the project were reviewed and found
some disparities were found. Verification on two outputs
was made as follows:
a. The committee agreed not to produce a separate set of
sustainable human development indices under the project.
b. The committee agreed to pursue the reduced version of
the output verified by the consultants.
- The proposed additional activity on development of Environmental
Sustainability Index (ESI) was endorsed and the consultant
was requested to develop a methodological paper and a work
plan to discuss in detail with the national teams during
the national workshop III.
- The revised work plan considered 31, December 2005 as
the deadline of the project.
- The committee observed the generated positive impacts
of the project to the GMS countries.
China has a plan to use the EPA systems developed by the
project to undertake a nation wide EPA exercise at national
and provincial levels. Myanmar has decided to institutionalize
and continue the EPA exercise with or without external assistance.
Vietnam is currently considering replacing its "State
of Environment Report" with national EPA report. Thailand
has already initiated an ESI exercise on its own and as
expressed by the national focal point the SEF II ESI exercise
will provide greater benefits to their efforts in terms
of methodology and technical expertise.
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