The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a global initiative offering two grant programs to countries that are committed to improving their policy performance. MCC recognizes that sustainable economic growth and a healthy environment are related, and the initiative utilizes performance indicators for selecting countries into funding programs and monitoring a country’s progress and improvement throughout the grant period.

Environmental sustainability is one of the major challenges Kuwait is facing in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Data for environmental performance indicators is limited for important issues in Kuwait, such as the consumption of ozone-depleting substances carbon dioxide emissions. Although Kuwait has performed well in other areas related to MDGs and has reached 100% population coverage for safe drinking water and basic sanitation resources, the government of Kuwait recognizes the need to develop and utilize additional indicators to address other important environmentally related goals.

Waste management has major effects on human and environmental health and is a major source of environmental pollution. After failing to effectively manage wastes, South Korea sought to restructure their policies on the decentralization of waste management. In the early 1990s, the Local Autonomy System for waste was introduced, and the focus of South Korea’s government changed from waste collection and processing to the reduction and reuse of waste as a resource. 

Adequate water supplies and sanitation are among the greatest challenges in public health related to the environment. Cambodia has suffered from high rates of diseases as a result of inadequate water and sanitation resources, and although Cambodians have made improvements their rural water coverage remains one of the lowest in Asia. As a result, the government of Cambodia has developed the national water supply and sanitation policy, which established the objective that “every person in rural communities has sustained access to safe water supply and sanitation services and [is] living in a hygienic environment by 2025.”

When Korea was ranked 136th out of 146 countries in the 2002 Environmental Sustainability Index, and 120th out of 122 countries for air quality, the South Korean government and major stakeholders recognized that air quality needed major attention.

The Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Construction and Transportation, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, and Ministry of Environment worked together with “The Alliance,” a group of non-governmental environmental organizations and major auto industries throughout Korea to start addressing urban air quality. The initiative focused particularly on the Seoul Metropolitan Area of South Korea where the primary concern is PM_10, which has both environmental and human health impacts.