Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Endowed with rich natural assets, its land is a foundation of economic growth and provides a range of goods and services to its people. However, due to the hilly nature of its terrain and land use changes impacted by high population growth, land has been degraded, which is expected to be exacerbated by climate change. Given its importance, land is one of core pillars of Rwanda’s Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy.
To address this issue, a pilot project – Achieving green growth through terrestrial natural capital restoration in Rwanda – was launched in December 2019 with the goal to underpin the central role of natural capital in macro-economic outputs in Rwanda, and to facilitate improved decision-making in green growth policies and to achieve national Sustainable Development Goal targets.
With support from the GGKP Natural Capital Expert Group and the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative, a team of experts, led by the Clean Energy and Sustainability Analytics Center (CESAC) at Montclair State University in the United States, have applied the integrated economic and environmental model (IEEM) coupled with land use land cover (LULC), and ecosystem service models (IEEM+ESM). The overall aim of this assessment was to understand how various green growth policy interventions could affect economic, poverty amelioration and environmental outcomes. After almost a year of work, the team presented results to national stakeholders from the government, development partners, NGOs and academia on 17 November 2020.
“Rwanda established land accounts. Now we need to think about how to integrate natural capital accounts into our policy and programme development,” said Patrick Karera, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment of Rwanda, adding that he hoped the assessment will complement what Rwanda has already done on natural capital.
Project lead Dr. Pankaj Lal, Director of CESAC, outlined five green growth and sustainable land use policy scenarios considered for the assessment: expansion of agroforestry; consolidation of cropland; consolidation of agroforestry and cropland; improvement in fertilization and irrigation; and comprehensive implementation of policies, which is a combination of the third and fourth scenarios.
Through stakeholder consultations, the project team identified these key policy scenarios on sustainable use of land which have strong green growth potential. Most scenarios considered in this assessment were based on the fourth Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation (PSTA) of Rwanda (2018-2024).
“In Rwanda, land restoration has strong potential in poverty reduction, which is linked to green growth as well. For our assessment, we focused on how sustainable land management can support green growth using the innovative IEEM modelling method,” said Dr. Lal.
The five policy scenarios were then assessed for economic, land cover and ecosystem services impacts. All scenarios demonstrated increases in real macro-economic indicators in a monetary term when projected to the year 2035. Among those, the fifth scenario showed a stronger impact in terms of reducing the number of Rwandese below the national poverty line. In terms of land cover impacts, the land assets changed across scenarios largely due shifts in livestock and agriculture. Three scenarios including tree planting on arable land and grasslands, showed much lower sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus exports, which signified prospects for fostering green growth in Rwanda.
Overall, the land consolidation scenario showed a potential to lift more Rwandese above the national poverty line and could provide greater economic benefits in terms of GDP growth, reduction in unemployment if coupled with improved agricultural productivity. The fifth scenario, which proposes to implement all policies simultaneously, could provide even stronger economic impact, resulting in less than 1.6 million Rwandese below the poverty line by 2035 compared to the current number of near 5 million.
The assessment revealed that designing and implementing the policies for agriculture, forestry and land use change in tandem would bring best possible socio-economic and environmental benefits, such as higher wages, employment and overall improved well-being.
Learn more: Policy Brief: Achieving Green Growth through Terrestrial Natural Capital Restoration in Rwanda.
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About the GGKP Natural Capital Expert Group
The GGKP Expert Group on Natural Capital explores state-of-the-art methods, models, data and tools to achieve its three goals of pushing forward the knowledge frontier around natural capital and green growth; mainstreaming natural capital in global green growth activities; and supporting stronger implementation of natural capital commitments in national economic plans. The group is comprised of 26 experts from across GGKP’s partner institutions, each with at least 10 years of experience working with natural capital. For more information, see About the Natural Capital Expert Group.
About the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative
The Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative aims to transform global understanding of the economic value of productive land based on both market and non-market values, and to improve stakeholder awareness for socioeconomic arguments to improve sustainable land management, prevent the loss of natural capital, preserve ecosystem services, combat climate change, and address food, energy, and water security.