Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures, Tables and Boxes -- Preface -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: About the Resource Book -- Aims -- Target audience -- Layout -- How to use this resource book -- Chapter 2: Sustainable Development and the Need for Strategic Responses -- The opportunity for a strategic approach to national development -- The challenges of environment and development -- Focus on national strategies for sustainable development -- Guidance to date on strategies for sustainable development -- Why a strategic approach to sustainable development is needed -- Chapter 3: The Nature of Sustainable Development Strategies and Current Practice -- Introduction -- What are sustainable development strategies? -- Key principles for developing sustainable development strategies -- Learning from current practice: existing strategy frameworks -- Chapter 4: Key Steps in Starting or Improving Strategies for Sustainable Development -- Harnessing effective strategic mechanisms in a continual-improvement system -- Scoping exercise -- Establishing or strengthening a strategy secretariat or coordinating body -- Establishing or strengthening a strategy steering committee or equivalent forum -- Seeking or improving political commitment for the strategy -- Establishing or confirming a mandate for the strategy -- Ensuring broad ownership of the strategy -- Mobilizing the required resources -- Identifying stakeholders and defining their roles in the strategy -- Mapping out the strategy process, taking stock of existing strategies and other planning processes -- Seeking to improve coherence and coordination between strategy frameworks at all levels -- Establishing and agreeing ground rules governing strategy procedures -- Establishing a schedule and calendar for the strategy process -- Promoting the strategy.

The role of experiments and pilot projects -- Establishing and improving the regular strategy mechanisms and processes -- Chapter 5: Analysis -- Approaching and organizing the tasks of analysis -- Analysing stakeholders in sustainable development -- Approaches to measuring and analysing sustainability -- Analysing sustainable development mechanisms and processes -- Scenario development -- Chapter 6: Participation in strategies for sustainable development -- Introduction -- Understanding participation -- Why participation is needed in strategies for sustainable development -- Ensuring effective participation - issues and planning requirements -- Methods for participation in strategies -- Chapter 7: Communications -- Introduction -- Shifting values, attitudes and styles -- Establishing a communications and information strategy and system -- Chapter 8: Strategy Decision-Making -- The scope of strategy decisions -- Challenges, principles and useful frameworks for making strategy decisions -- Institutional roles and processes for strategy decisions -- Selecting instruments for implementing strategy decisions -- Chapter 9: The financial basis for strategies -- Introduction -- Mobilizing finance -- Using market mechanisms to create incentives for sustainable development -- Mainstreaming sustainable development into investment and financial decision-making -- Chapter 10: Monitoring and evaluation systems -- Introduction -- Who should undertake monitoring and evaluation? -- When should monitoring and evaluation be undertaken? -- The 'pressure-state-response' framework for monitoring - its utility and limitations -- Monitoring the implementation of the strategy and ensuring accountability -- Monitoring and evaluating the results of the strategy -- Disseminating the findings of monitoring exercises and feedback to strategy decisions -- Appendix -- References.

Index.