Life of Project Environmental Compliance and Environmentally Sound Design and Management

Course Overview

This is an intensive, participatory, field-focused training of 3.5–4.5 days for USAID Mission personnel and activity partners in compliance with USAID’s mandatory environmental procedures and in the objectives of these procedures: environmentally sound design and management (ESDM) of USAID’s activities.

It addresses environmental compliance and ESDM throughout life-of-project (LOP), with a particular focus on the design of environmental mitigation and monitoring measures, their implementation, and follow-through.

In contrast to the ENCAP “Africa Regional Course in Environmental Assessment and Environmentally Sound Design and Management” (EA-ESDM course), this course does NOT center on teaching skills to develop USAID environmental review (“Reg 216”) documentation (Categorical Exclusions, IEEs and EAs). Development of such documentation is the first step in LOP compliance, but most mission staff and partners are its users and implementers—not its developers. Accordingly, the training focuses on the skills and knowledge needed to implement Reg. 216 documentation effectively.

The training is designed to reinforce and build on classroom sessions with field work. Field visits are programmed on all but the final day of the workshop.

The agenda and materials were piloted at an Africa Regional USAID staff training in June 2008. The first Mission/partner presentation of this course was held 24–27 June 2008 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.