Sustainable Development Program.

The Sustainable Development Program (SDP) is a multi-sectoral national program. It represents the revised version of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of the country applicable for the period of 2008-2021. The key objectives and strategic priorities of the Program concern especially the promotion of sustainable economic growth as the major factor contributing to poverty reduction, as well as the redistribution of public resources aimed at solving social problems, fostering the elimination of extreme poverty and human development.The document addresses agricultural sector development in an integrated way. It notes that in the conditions of stable economic growth, the current approach of national environmental policy should focus on ensuring availability of natural resources for future growth, their balanced use and establishment of guarantees for prevention of environmental pollution. According to it, the national policy and legislation for environmental protection pursue the following objectives: (1) prevent or limit detrimental impact on human health and environment; (2) protect biodiversity; (3) ensure adequate rate of recovery of renewable natural resources; and (4) ensure rational and efficient use of non-renewable natural resources.The Program aims to reduce the share of poor population to 14.0% in 2012; to 10.1% in 2015; and to 6.8% in 2021 instead of 26.0% in 2006. The poverty will be substantially reduced both in urban and rural areas. With regard to rural poverty, the share of the poor population will make 14.9% in 2012; 11.6% in 2015, and 9.1% in 2021 instead of 26.6% in 2006. Throughout the document, special attention is paid to social protection of the most vulnerable parts of the society. The document also notes that under poverty alleviation priorities special importance is attached to increasing the level of public participation in the decision making process, underlining the necessity for public awareness and knowledge, social partnership, social inclusion and social participation. In addition, the Program plans to ensure rational use of water resources. In view of the vulnerability of the country’s water resources caused by global climate change, programs will be developed to protect national water resources, regulate river flows and ensure availability and rational use of water to prevent possible conflict among water users and ensure that the amount of water and water take regimes are adequate for natural regeneration and recovery. The creation of river basin management bodies, initiated in 2007 as the first experience in decentralized environmental management, will require more representation of communities, civil society and professional training on basin management. Additionally, it discusses the issue of forestry indicating that the development of community forest management plans is underway, pilot projects are designed to inform future community forest management scope and models. According to the SDP, the Government is committed to encouraging community and private forest management and pest management projects in line with Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol and Global Environmental Facility.One of the main priorities of the Government for the Program would be to encourage a progressive growth of export of agricultural products and to ensure the increase of their specific weight. This would be implemented within the framework of an overall strategy for promotion of foreign trade, improvement of customs administration, reduction of transportation costs and elimination of technical barriers for trade as well as by encouraging the establishment of integrated private structures and enterprises for primary processing of agricultural products and ensuring the availability of credit financial resources for them; taking into account the specifics of agricultural production. The Government will also encourage the increase of farm marketability and the change of commodity production structure through a policy aimed at stimulating a progressive growth in production of highly marketable agricultural products. The Sustainable Development Program envisages that as a result of agrarian policy promoting the establishment of large commercial farms their specific weight in agricultural value added will gradually increase from 2.4% in 2006 to 11.4% in 2021. The number of farms will respectively reduce by 10% and there will be a migration of labor force from farms to commercial enterprises. The main policy components ensuring such transition, the SDP notes, are improvement of business and investment environments, application of effective mechanisms for pawning of agricultural lands, reviving of land market and significant reduction of informal transactions related to land sales.The SDT also touches upon the issue of disaster preparedness noting that natural risks associated to agricultural activities will be mitigated through development of relevant infrastructures (anti-hail stations; anti-spate measures; etc.) as well as through development and introduction of an appropriate insurance system.The Government of Armenia, with donor support and in view of the shortcomings and gaps of the monitoring system identified in the previous PRSP implementation report, shall be making a transition from the PRSP monitoring indicators system towards the deployment of a workable SDP monitoring and evaluation system which will be piloted at the level of government ministries and agencies and within two years’ time frame rolled out across the public administration system. The Program notes that the Government provides great importance to civil society participation in SDP monitoring and evaluation process in the framework of a participatory process.