Work plan

Institutional arrangements for policy integration

The integration of environment and health concerns into transport policy is crucial for sustainable development and constitutes one of the priorities for THE PEP.  It is, however, a challenging task to put into practise because of factors such as conflicting interests and priorities between policy-makers in different sectors. Institutional conditions are one means of promoting policy integration. They range from merged organizational structures and budgets, at one extreme, to simple sharing of information or appropriate mechanisms for consultation between ministries at the other.

The present activity was approved by THE PEP Steering Committee to meet the need expressed by a number of countries, in particular in EECCA and South-East Europe, to receive concrete and practical guidance on institutional arrangements for policy integration both within and between the central and local administrations.

The activity aims to contribute to understanding about policy-making processes that integrate transport, environment and health issues more effectively, with a focus on institutional arrangements. Taking stock and building on existing policy documents and publications, it involves establishing and analyzing current institutional practise in the UNECE – WHO/Europe region to identify success criteria and barriers to policy integration and examining the ways for the different countries in the region to learn from them.

• Information about current practise concerning institutional arrangements was collected through an on-line questionnaire survey between late 2005 and early 2006.
• Thereafter a "Workshop on Institutional Conditions for Integrated Transport, Environment and Health Policies", was held on 23–24 January 2006 in Berlin, Germany to deepen and complete the information obtained and to issue conclusions and further steps.
• The outcomes of the Berlin workshop will be discussed by THE PEP Steering Committee at its session in April 2006 after which the project report will be finalized. The report will be published in Russian and French and presented at the 3rd High-level Meeting of 2007.
• Capacity-building activities, such as training courses and worskhops for professionals may be developed as a follow-up activity.