Cleaner production at the Asian Development Bank

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) recognizes that protecting Asia’s environmental quality will require significant decreases in the intensity of resource use and pollution. This requires a focus on consumption, production and distribution of goods and services as the foundation of environmentally sustainable economic development. Cleaner Production (CP) is the strategy used by ADB to affect intensities of resource use and pollution generation. CP includes many tools for many different areas, but they all include a foundation of life cycle management and risk reduction. CP began in ADB as a technical approach to improve the environmental performance of projects. It has evolved into a broad program that seeks to integrate preventive environmental management and technology into national and regional policies and sustainable development strategies. Experience has shown that CP is promoted primarily by changes in behaviors, not technologies. The challenge for the ADB is to help its Developing Member Countries bring CP concepts into national development policy, governance, technology development and information exchange, and private sector investment. Promoting CP in new industrial investment in Asia, particularly by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and promoting the adoption of CP principles as development policy in DMCs will be major goals of the ADB.