Greening Public Budgets in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia

Public expenditure remain crucial for addressing environmental problems and, more broadly, promoting a greener model of development in the countries of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA). Traditionally, however, the environmental sector in the EECCA countries has not been very effective in attracting domestic public financing. As the global economic and financial crisis imposes ever-tighter constraints on public budgets in the region, and as donors shift to new approaches of delivering aid via country systems, this sector becomes increasingly vulnerable to underfunding.
This report aims to help EECCA environmental administrations to harness the potential benefits of on-going public finance reforms (PFM) in the region. More specifically, it analyses the opportunities for and obstacles to integrating multi-year public environmental programmes into the medium-term expenditure frameworks (MTEFs) that a number of EECCA countries are introducing. The results from this analysis are based on a regional survey, involving ten EECCA countries, namely: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. This survey was conducted within the framework of the Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Programme (EAP) for EECCA.