Poverty Reduction and the Millennium Development Goal on Environmental Sustainability : Opportunities for Alignment
About 50 countries have prepared interim and full Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). In this context, this paper examines Millennium Development Goal (MDG)7: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability, its targets and indicators, and responds to three questions: To what extent do PRSPs define and adopt targets and indicators that align with those of MDG7? To what extent do the available data allow tracking of progress with respect to MDG7? When data are available, what are the trends, and how can the data be effectively utilized to examine the status and trends of countries in relation to MDG7? The assessment of interim and full Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) shows that: 1) Only 12 of the 28 full PRSPs present some information on the baselines and targets in line with the MDG7; and none of the 22 interim PRSPs present discussion on the long-term perspective; 2) Within the PRSPs that present targets aligned with MDG7, attention is almost exclusively focused on water and sanitation; 3) Available data can be used to document the status and trends of relevant MDG7 indicators.