Capacity Building Workshop for Policy Makers on the Application and Use of Economic Instruments for Sustainable Development

23 - 25 February 2004, Nairobi, Kenya

This regional training workshop was organized jointly by UNEP's Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI) - Capacity Building Branch, UNEP's Economics and Trade Branch (ETB), the Regional Office of Africa and the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) to build the capacity of trainers, planners and decision makers on the use of economic instruments (EIs). The workshop was based on ETB's recent publication "The Use of Economic Instruments in Environmental Policy: Opportunities and Challenges", which KIPPRA developed into a draft training resource manual "The Use of EIs for Environment and Natural Resource Management". Twenty-one participants from environmental authorities, research and training institutes from South Africa, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana and Egypt, including one representative from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), were trained to carry out capacity building activities on the use of EIs at national level. Each country documented an environmental problem of national importance, worked on it in the course of the workshop by applying the analytical framework provided, and presented a possible EI-policy option. The draft training manual was then revised and further developed based on the comprehensive feedback provided by the participants. The final version will be made available to countries to support their national training activities and also to replicate the capacity building workshop in other regions such as Asia and Latin America.