The report is structured around two arguments. Firstly, natural resources and ecosystem services in particular have a significant contribution to economic growth and poverty reduction. Secondly, failure to manage natural resources, conserve and protect the ecosystem will result in costs of degradation that will compromise medium and long term sustainable development.
These arguments are nested in a context of poverty in Rwanda. While deep levels of poverty in Rwanda are related to a recent genocide, there is ample evidence to show that they are also related to increasing population pressure, degradation of the environment and unsustainable use of land and natural resources in the four decades after independence. Recent official estimates of poverty in 2001 put the number of people below a poverty line of Rwf 64,000 at 60.2 per cent having declined from 77 per cent after the genocide.