Since 1992, when the international community adopted Agenda 21 as a global action plan for sustainable development, almost all ESCAP member governments have initiated measures to improve their environmental administration. Such steps include legislative reform, ratification of international conventions and treaties, capacity building, institutional strengthening, and improved environmental monitoring. It is still too early to tell, however, the degree to which these measures have made a positive impact. Most acute among the region's environmental ills are land degradation and the problems accompanying large-scale urbanization, such as unhygienic human settlements, air and water pollution, strains on water supply, solid waste overload, and overburdened infrastructure.

A fundamental prerequisite for implementation of Agenda 21 in the ESCAP nations is the institutionalization of its aims: the incorporation of its values at the core of policies on energy, agriculture, human settlements, land, water and other natural resource sectors. To focus on this goal, governments could concentrate on four inter-related targets cited in the action plan:

• integrate sustainable development principles into policy planning and management from the outset
• improve legal and regulatory frameworks
• make effective use of market-based and economic instruments
• establish systems of integrated environmental and economic accounting

In order to promote the regional implementation of Agenda 21, the Regional Action Programme for Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development, 1996-2000 was adopted by countries of the region to provide a timely response to the major environmental problems identified in the 1995 report on the State of the Environment in Asia and the Pacific. In May 1997, an Expert Group Meeting on the implementation of the Regional Action Programme on Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development, 1996-2000, was held in Bangkok where experts from 19 countries met together with the United Nations agencies to review project profiles in order to translate the 24 programme areas into specific and realistic projects.