24th August 2005, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis presented The Sustainable Difference: Energy and Environment to Achieve the MDGs. The Report makes the case that the role and costs of energy and environment should be explicitly factored into national MDG strategies. Not doing so, say the authors, will only entrench poverty, constrain the delivery of social services, limit opportunities for women, and erode environmental sustainability. An expanded section of country profiles is included, summarizing key environmental challenges in each of the countries in which UNDP operates, and providing an overview of ongoing UNDP-supported energy and environment programmes and projects and their impact.

UNDP’s new publication highlights the important role that energy and ecosystem services play in providing the poor with the means to improve their livelihoods, as well as protecting nature’s capacity to provide invaluable ecosystem services upon which economic growth depends. The book is a comprehensive compilation of UNDP’s work in each of its 166 programme countries, demonstrating how local communities from Kenya to Syria, Guatemala to Mongolia are working to create sustainable livelihoods while contributing to addressing global environmental challenges.

The book is also a valuable reference for energy and environment practitioners, containing up-to-date environmental and sustainable development indicators from UNDP’s 2005 Human Development Report.

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