Peer Review of the Netherlands National Strategy for Sustainable Development. Report launched in Amsterdam
The review, advised and facilitated by IIED’s Barry Dalal-Clayton, was undertaken by experts from Finland, Germany and South Africa. It has stimulated a reinvigorated approach to sustainable development in the Netherlands by the new coalition government.
Read more and download the final report

IIED completes review of monitoring mechanisms for national sustainable development strategies (NSDS).
This review by Barry Dalal-Clayton and Steve Bass was commissioned by the Environment Department of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It provides a background document for a forthcoming OECD workshop on NSDS in Stockholm in late August 2006. The report briefly reviews a range of NSDS monitoring approaches and explores the potentials and challenges of monitoring in relation to five key strategy elements: (a) the strategy process, (b) strategy content or products, (c) outcomes and (d) impacts. In addition, the key tasks of (e) disseminating and using monitoring information are discussed.
view review document (PDF file 678k)

French Government tests a methodology for the peer review of national strategies for sustainable development
The French government, with technical support from IIED, has recently developed a methodology for the peer review / shared learning of national strategies for sustainable development, using the French strategy as a pilot case. Four countries acted as peer reviewers: Belgium, Ghana, Mauritius, and the UK. The outcomes were presented at the recent meeting of the UN Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD13).
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New paper on the EU Strategy for Sustainable Development
A new paper by IIED examines the process of developing the EU's Sustainable Development Strategy (both its internal and external dimensions). It is a contribution to a project to generate Asian, African and Latin American perspectives of the external dimensions of the EU Strategy, and on key policy instruments and processes which shape the interaction of the EU with other regions of the world.
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Environmental News from the United Kingdom on EarthWire
EarthWire/UK is a joint initiative between UNEP/GRID-Arendal in Norway and IIED, which gives you a free daily overview of environmental news from the United Kingdom.

Every working day, a team from IIED reviews national, regional and local media sources for environment and sustainable development-related news stories. Relevant stories are included in EarthWire/UK where they can be viewed by country, topic, or time period. A search engine allows users to search for issues and keywords in the archive. Press releases and news from research organisations, the public sector, and environmental organisations are included as well.
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Resource Book now available
Sustainable Development Strategies: A Resource Book has now been reviewed and is available for ordering and free download and and will be available on National Strategies for Sustainable Development: Website CD-ROM for Supporting Dialogues - Volume Three (forthcoming). A publication background note is now available. Read more.

Case Studies Companion to Resource Book now available
Stakeholder Dialogues on Sustainable Development Strategies: Lessons, Opportunities and Developing Country Case Studies is available for ordering and free download provides a unique set of case studies summarising recent developing country experiences of developing and implementing national sustainable development strategies (NSDSs). These are based directly on the work of country teams that facilitated multi-stakeholder dialogues on NSDSs. Read more.

National Strategies for Sustainable Development
Website CD-ROM for Supporting Dialogues - Volume Three
Now available from IIED Online book shop at Earthprint.com. The CD-ROM contains all the information from the website as well as all the software required to use the CD-ROM is included. The CD-ROM is designed for PC computers using Windows 95/98 or NT/2000.

World Summit on Sustainable Development
The Resource Book was discussed at the International Forum on National Sustainable Development Strategies (as an input to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002) held in Accra, Ghana, from 7 - 9 November 2001.


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Congratulations to Dr. Vladimmr Kremsa (Mexico), Sante Foresta (Italy) and Roos Renders (Belgium). Their names were drawn at random from the completed questionnaires received by 28 February 2002. Free copies of the nssd Resource Book will be sent on to them when it is published.
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OECD/DAC Policy Statement by the DAC High Level Meeting upon endorsement of the DAC Guidelines on Strategies for Sustainable Development: Practical Guidance for Development Co-operation. Paris, 25-26 April 2001.
The statement can be downloaded as a PDF file in English or French.

Strategies for Sustainable Development: Practical Guidance for Development Co-operation (May 2001) - the full document is now available. Additonally, it can be downloaded as a PDF file in English, French, or Spanish. The Table of Contents, Preface and Executive summary are can also be downloaded in PDF format, however they are only available as an English version.

New Bolivian reference material
Now available from NSSD, The Law on National Dialogue 2000
and Declaration of Municipalities on strengthening management capacity for health are featured on this site.