Integrating Sustainable Project Management Principles Into Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies: A Pathway to Effective Project Management

Abstract

The gap between the design and effective management of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies is one of the most significant challenges to sustainable development goals. Despite decades of global climate commitment, implementation remains fragmented, pilot-scale, poorly sustained beyond project closure and inadequate to the scale of climate vulnerability faced by communities in developing countries. Although the concept of Sustainable Project Management (SPM) which integrates environmental, social, and economic sustainability principles across the project lifecycle has gained growing recognition, it is not widely explored and under applied, especially in the climate implementation context. A systematic literature review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework to review secondary peer reviewed literature on the conceptual foundations, operational principles and practical application of SPM within climate mitigation and adaptation programming through the theoretical lens of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF). The review identifies six core SPM principles relevant to climate implementation: lifecycle sustainability integration, stakeholder participation and community co-design, long-term impact and resilience orientation, efficient resource use, sustainability oriented monitoring and evaluation and proactive risk management. Applying these principles to climate mitigation and adaptation project design and implementation may address structural causes of implementation failure, such as donor-driven projects, weak community ownership and participation, absent or weak post project closure sustainability planning and fragmented or weak monitoring. It also positions the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework not only as a tool that looks at livelihood capitals but also as a framework that should take into account how projects actively build livelihood capital from inception. The findings call for investment in sustainable project management capacity building among project implementers, institutional reforms, and empirical research to operationalize sustainable project management in climate change.