Good morning!

It is a pleasure to be with you today for this important gathering of you, our valued development partners, as well as representatives from across the environment and natural resources sector. As the new Minister of Environment, I must also say that I am an ambassador for the environment.

As my first official event with the Ministry of Environment, it’s also a pleasure to meet many of you. Thank you for taking time to join us and I am very much looking forward to discussing our shared priorities and how we can work together to achieve them. Thank you Co-Chair for your kind words and promise to continue your support to the sector and the country at large. We are very grateful.

For two decades, Rwanda has been working hard to elevate environmental and climate change issues in our national discussions and development agenda. We understand the critical role that our natural environment plays as a foundation for sustainable socio-economic transformation. That’s why we have put in place a robust policy and legal framework as well as strong and capable institutions.

In this time, we have seen impressive results thanks to the work we have done together. For example, we banned single-use plastics to promote alternative packaging solutions, achieved 30% forest coverage, rehabilitated thousands of hectares of degraded lands and catchments, launched e-mobility solutions for cars and motorbikes and introduced new policies for environment and climate change, forestry as well as land. We also adopted one of the world’s first national cooling strategies which will help us achieve our climate action targets and the Kigali Amendment.

I wish to express my thanks and give recognition to everyone who worked tirelessly over many years to achieve these and other goals. To our partners represented here today, thank you for your ongoing and invaluable contribution to building a clean and green Rwanda.

As Rwanda’s economy grows quickly, however, we need to mainstream environment and climate change into decision making and the national development agenda. Thanks to the national Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy and supporting policy instruments, we have a clear framework for achieving this.

We have seen, however, that many sectors are still operating with a business as usual approach. More needs to be done to ensure the environment and climate change are considered in the policies, strategies, projects and programmes being developed in all sectors of the economy.

As major development partners, we count on your support to make this a reality. Just as we have had success in mainstreaming gender across the work of government, so too must we with environment and climate change.

We are also working on an ambitious Climate Action Plan, known as our Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. Our NDCs touch all sectors of the economy, from health and agriculture to energy and infrastructure.

To ensure all sectors can play their rightful role in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, we are working with them to prepare bankable project proposals. This process is capital and expertise intensive. Therefore, we look forward to working with you to upskill our technical teams and ensure all sectors are climate finance ready.

This morning is also an opportunity to identify potential areas of cooperation that can be scaled up and replicated as well as pinpoint those areas which require renewed focus. We only have one planet and we must take care of it.

To conclude, I wish to extend my thanks to the organisers of this workshop.  By working together, we can further build understanding of the important role environmental protection plays in supporting sustainable economic growth, fostering innovation and job creation. The sustainability of Rwanda’s development journey depends on our ability to put the environment and climate change at the heart of everything we do.

Thank you for your kind attention.