MOEJ Launches Innovative Pilot Program for Mainstreaming SDGs into its Project Cycle

Minister of the Environment, Koizumi Shinjiro announced today that the Ministry of the Environment of Japan (MOEJ) has launched a Pilot Program for mainstreaming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into its project PDCA cycle from fiscal year 2020 (April 2020 to March 2021).

Currently, ministries and agencies are implementing their own projects towards achievement of the SDGs that match their own missions; however, it is unclear whether or to what extent they have contributed to the achievement of the SDGs that are not relevant to their missions. (For example, the MOEJ has been actively implementing climate change projects to contribute to the achievement of the SDG 13 (Climate Action), but the extent to which the MOEJ has contributed to the achievement of other socio-economic goals is not clear).

To transform such sector-by-sector work into a more effective policy framework, the Pilot Program aims to establish a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle system to enhance the multiple benefits of all SDGs resulting from the implementation of MOEJ's projects (see Figure 1 Schematics of the PDCA cycle system).

At the beginning of fiscal year 2020 (around May 2020), all bureaus and department of the Ministry will voluntarily select a couple of model projects to set targets on multiple SDGs concerning both the environment and socio-economic benefits including health, gender equality, economic growth and job creation (see Table 1 Example list of targets). They will implement the projects to enhance results concerning multiple benefits, taking into account technical advice provided by members of the General Policy Committee, Central Environment Council of Japan as well as experts of the SGDs Stakeholders Meeting hosted by the MOEJ on a regular basis.

At the beginning of next fiscal year (i.e., early FY 2021), all bureaus and department of the Ministry will monitor and evaluate results concerning the multiple benefits of the SDGs derived from implementation of the projects, then update the targets accordingly in order to enhance the results concerning multiple SDGs through implementation of the projects in FY2021.

Minister Koizumi stressed that "the Pilot Program, which enables a single government project to seek multiple goals, will provide an innovative tool to break the silos between different goals implemented by relevant ministries and agencies in the Government of Japan." (See Figure 2 Schematics of the transformational perspective of the Pilot Program).The MOEJ has made efforts to seek integrated policy solutions to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs in such areas as climate change & disaster risk reduction and empowerment of local actions. To accelerate the integrated policy actions, Minister Koizumi called for enhancing multi-stakeholder collaboration domestically and internationally, including partnership activities with the United Nations University for increasing awareness of the Pilot Program.

Please contact for further information to:
Global Environment Bureau
TAKEMOTO Akio (AKIO_TAKEMOTO@env.go.jp +81-3-3581-3351, ex. 7771)
AMAKO Naoki (NAOKI_AMAKO@env.go.jp +81-3-3581-3351, ex. 7760)

Minister's Secretariat
YAMAGUCHI Yuji (YUJI_YAMAGUCHI@env.go.jp, +81-3-3581-3351, ex. 6053)

For Japanese

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