This Command Paper sets out the Government's strategy for sustainable development, taking into account the national and international developments that have occurred since its previous policy statement ('A better quality of life: a strategy for sustainable development in the United Kingdom', Cm 4345; ISBN 0101434529) published in May 1999, including devolution in Scotland and Wales and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. The strategy is based on four agreed priorities of sustainable consumption and production, climate change, natural resource protection, and sustainable communities with a focus on tackling environmental inequalities; and uses a new indicator set with commitments to look at new indicators such as on well-being. Proposals include: the establishment of a new Community Action 2020 programme; and strengthening the role of the Sustainable Development Commission to ensure an independent review of government progress, with all central government departments and executive agencies to produce sustainable development actions plans by December 2005.

Since last investigated in 2003, the Export Credits Guarantee Department has continued to make progress on sustainable development that deserves to be recognised. Sound foundations have been laid and mechanisms put in place that offer a good framework for further action. There is still room for improvement in the way sustainable development is incorporated into the agency's decision-making and the ECGD must ensure its activities are in line with wider Government aspirations on sustainable development. The challenge is for the ECGD to demonstrate that sustainable development is given appropriate weight within its current remit and that it does nothing that would actively undermine this principle. In particular, the ECGD should identify areas where its environmental standards could be tightened. More rigorous standards can then be applied across its portfolio, including to aerospace exports. The ECGD must improve the transparency of its assessment processes and increase the level of disclosure of project information. It is important that the department does more to attract renewable energy and other projects that support sustainable development; support from Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) will be vital in taking this forward. The ECGD's approach to sustainable development is all the more important because of its ability to influence and raise standards internationally. A bolder approach from the ECGD on sustainable development issues and transparency will be vital in improving the performance of Export Credit Agencies in general.

The regular annual report, the Sustainable Development in Government report, covering the whole of central government on environmental and sustainable development issues, is seen as a success in the "greening government" initiative since 1997, along with the Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate. Reporting by individual departments is less satisfactory. The Framework contains targets for departments on public reporting of their sustainable development impacts, but they are neither demanding nor specific. Some significant areas of departmental activity fall outside the parameters for sustainable development reporting, for example involvement in PFI contracts, and the Committee wants departments to be able to report on these matters. The UK Sustainable Development Strategy required all departments and executive agencies to produce an annual Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP) by December 2005. The Committee is disappointed that 14 departments and agencies did not meet this deadline. The Committee would like SDAPs to be published alongside the departmental annual reports in the spring. This report also includes, as an annex (p. 11-41), the National Audit Office briefing, detailing the findings of its review of annual sustainable development reporting by UK government departments in 2004.

This report examines the extent to which government departments and executive agencies are meeting targets to make their new buildings and major refurbishments more sustainable. Each year departments and agencies spend in the region of £3 billion on these projects, and if sustainability is handled well, it can and should provide better value for money in the long term. Key findings include: i) government is failing to meet the sustainability standards it has set for the construction and refurbishment of buildings on the government estate, as well as for sustainable operations targets set for carbon emissions, energy and water consumption; and ii) various barriers are hindering progress towards more sustainable buildings, including the fragmentation of policy responsibility among government bodies for improving sustainable construction and refurbishment, the absence of a coherent approach to monitoring progress and ensuring compliance, and the widespread perception of a conflict between sustainability and value for money.

This book goes beyond environmental protection and looks at sustainability by predominantly focusing on human and social sustainability and this focus is carried into sections of the book that discuss sustainable policies, media and gender. The book takes an academic and practitioner approach.

Progressing towards sustainable development raises important challenges to conducting performance evaluations in governments because there are neither generally accepted methods nor specific standards to be met at present. Sustainability Performance Evaluation System in Government, makes a conceptual contribution to public sustainability performance evaluation and develops a set of framework indicators with the help of the strategic and comprehensive approach “Sustainability Balanced Scorecard”. As a conceptual basis for the further research and application, this volume will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners at many levels of environmental / sustainability, public management and strategic control studies. Evaluators will find methodological approaches and applied tools for their work. Decision-makers and managers will find it valuable to manage the social, economic and environmental issues in a balanced and integrated manner. Governments will also find it helpful in assisting them in establishing an evaluation system towards sustainable development.

This new edition incorporates revised guidance from H.M Treasury which is designed to promote efficient policy development and resource allocation across government through the use of a thorough, long-term and analytically robust approach to the appraisal and evaluation of public service projects before significant funds are committed. It is the first edition to have been aided by a consultation process in order to ensure the guidance is clearer and more closely tailored to suit the needs of users.

sustainable development Strategy : Illusion or reality?, thirteenth report of session 2003-04, Vol. 2: Written and oral Evidence

Sustainable Water Services: A Procedural Guide is the result of the Sustainable Water industry Asset Resource Decisions (SWARD) project, undertaken by a consortium of UK academics in collaboration with water service providers in Scotland, England and Romania. It has been developed to act as a practical tool to assist with the explicit inclusion of ?sustainability? in the decision-making processes of those responsible for providing water services. The book contains a framework that comprises a set of decision support processes that can be used by water service providers to explicitly incorporate sustainability considerations into their decision-making procedures, through the use of sustainability principles, criteria, indicators and processes. These principles and criteria can be applied at an overall corporate strategic level, for example in the service provider?s mission statement, or at an application level, where these strategic principles are being applied to a particular decision. Sustainable Water Services is designed to inform and to provide support for strategic activity, both as a resource containing information about sustainability, and by employing feedback from application to inform the strategic processes of the water service provider. Presents an inclusive and generic set of sustainability criteria for use in water industry decision making processes; Discusses the legislative drivers for sustainable decision making for the UK water industry; Presents clear case study examples of the sustainability framework in action; Discusses the use and applicability of a wide range of tools and techniques for undertaking environmental, economic and social analyses, e.g. life cycle assessment, multi-criteria analysis.