Environmental Cooperation and Capacity Development: Review of the Concept of Capacity Development in Environment (CDE)

Abstract

This article reviews the important reports and studies related to Capacity Development and Capacity Development in Environment (CDE) in order to develop an appropriate direction of environmental cooperation especially for environmental management in the future. This article adopts, in the final section, new institutional economics approach for the theoretical and practical framework of CDE.

The main findings of this article are as follows.

First, from the history of capacity development approach of United Nations Development Programme, the concept of capacity development distinguishes the actors by level such as system, institution, organization, individual, and aims to grasp the actors' performance (outputs and outcomes) within the overall framework which includes institutional development and organizational development. This concept is, however, quite ambiguous in practice.

Second, from the review of the reports and documents, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development has attempted to give donors good theoretical and practical CDE guidelines in the international cooperation of environmental management. The discussions, however, have not made clear the differences between capacity development and CDE, or, the elements of environment in CDE. CDE should be given a new approach that takes these into consideration, including the issue of critical minimum from the viewpoint of human health and ecosystem protection.

Third and more theoretically, new institutional economics and comparative institutional analysis, which deal with various actors in the social system, can suggest a theoretical and practical framework for capacity development and CDE. A bundle of institutions in enviromental managemant can be recognized as a social environmental management system (SEMS).