The Five-year Strategic Plan for the Environment and Natural Resources Sector is a national multi sectoral plan of Rwanda for the period 2009 – 2013. The overall objective of the ENR Sector Strategic Plan (SSP) is to develop sustainable capacities to ensure that environment and natural resources are utilized and managed productively in support of sustainable national development and economic growth, in line with the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) targets, namely the economic growth and poverty reduction, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Vision 2020 aspirations. This will be realized in 8 specific objectives which represent the Priority programmes and strategic actions for the sector: (a) equitable, productive and sustainable use and management of land resources; (b) equitable and sustainable utilization of water resources through integrated water resources management and conservation; (c) adequate and sustainable supply of forest and biomass resources to meet the growing multiple demands for food, fibre, fodder, fuel as well as environmental services; (d) promoting productive, efficient andenvironmentally sensitive mineral exploration and exploitation; (e) restoring, conserving and sustainable management of ecosystems to ensure continued and enhanced functioning of critical ecosystems; (f) raising awareness of and integrating environmental sustainability principles in/ across all key sectors of the EDPRS; (g) strengthening policy and legislative frameworks for sustainable environment and natural resources management, by harmonizing policies, legal and regulatory instruments within/ across sectors and with regional and international frameworks; and (h) increasing human and institutional capacity, at national and decentralized entities including civil society and private sector. This strategy is also an integrated framework of implementing 13 multilateral environmental agreements that the Government of Rwanda ratified at various points in time that are presently part of the national priority agenda. In formulating this strategy, the Ministry involved and its partners have considered that a strategic plan is considered relevant if it’s implementable through sufficient and appropriate mechanisms in place to implement it. The institutional framework for implementation of the ENR policy will entail: i) Establishing a sector-wide coordination mechanism (SWAp), building synergy in mobilizing and allocating funding, enhancing effective planning and follow-up. A multi-sector working group will be put in place and facilitated to follow-up sub-sector and cross-sectoral activities leading up to the SWAp. ii) Action Planning: This plan presents a broad statement of sector priorities that will have to be further broken down into specific annual, quarterly and monthly action plans by the relevant institutions/ agencies/departments. iii) Institutional roles and responsibilities: The departments, institutions and agencies which have responsibility for implementing some components of the strategic plan are clearly summarized by the Strategy. iv) Monitoring, evaluation and information management: considerable efforts have been put in formulating a set of key performance indicators and targets, as well as a robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system that includes data collection, storage, analysis and reporting. To ensure that the results are clearly communicated among stakeholders, sector-specific strategies for communication and information management will be established. Mechanisms will also be put in place to mobilize sufficient technical and financial resources to facilitate data collection, analysis and reporting; as well s incentives for feed-back. This SSP broadly states the targets and indicative costs, the means for achieving targets (financial and technical resources), implementation modalities, key performance indicators (KPIs) and actions for monitoring and evaluation.
Rwanda · 2009-06-01