National Strategy for Sustainable Development of the Republic of Belarus 2020.

The National Strategy for Sustainable Development of the Republic of Belarus -2020 is a multi-sectoral strategy that lays down a long-term program of a step-by-step transition to sustainable development. It identifies specific areas of transformation and activities required to achieve the strategic goals, necessary resources and mechanisms, management and coordination arrangements at local, regional, national and international levels.
One of the main pillars of sustainable development is sustainable environment.To this end, the main areas of work will be: A) Improved Environment Policy and Better Economic Mechanism of Nature Use that will be attained through mitigation of negative effects of the environment and restoration of disturbed ecosystems; amendment of the nature conservation legislation; fostering of an efficient and sustainable environment management; raising environmental awareness; implementation of the main recommendations of the strategic environment impact assessment of programs, legal acts, and project decisions; equal access to natural resources for legal entities and natural persons; and establishment of the market of environmental services, technologies and equipment. B) Conservation and Wise Management of Natural Resources. Concerning water resources, the major tasks will be to prevent surface water pollution, increase capacities of water treatment facilities and enhance their purification efficiency, and reduce health risks by supplying clean potable water. For the land resources, the important activities will be reclamation of radioactively contaminated lands, protection of soils from water and wind erosion,conservation of drained lands, forestation of unproductive agricultural lands, reclamation of degraded lands, prevention of heavy metal pollution, and reduction of excessive recreational, technical and other anthropogenic pressures.
A task of primary importance is for the farming sector to improve economic efficiency and ensure economic growth. TO this end, it is necessary to promote research, develop competitive advantages, chiefly derived from natural and climatic conditions (milk and meat cattle breeding, flax and potato growing, etc.); improve machinery and equipment used in agriculture; concentrate resources in priority areas and highly lucrative types of production, substantially increase yielding capacity of crops and producing ability of cattle; finetune pricing policy and eliminate price disparities; transform unprofitable agroindustrial companies into new market entities; implement dedicated programs targeting agriculture at the cost of the national budget, and stimulate export. Institutional changes in the agro-industrial complex designed to address the existing dissociation of producers and consolidate their economic interests will focus on the cooperation and integration of companies, producing, processing and selling agricultural produce, and creation of specialized and multi-sectoral agro-industrial food entities.
To increase resilience of livelihoods to disasters work will focus on development and implementation of targeted and sci_tech emergency prevention programs; emergency response training for people; recognition of public rights and duties during emergencies, and social security for people who participated in emergency relief activities; preventive monitoring to protect people and territories from the consequences of emergencies, openness of information; international cooperation in the field of emergency prevention and management; increase of environmental security for defense facilities.
Implementation of the strategy may be measured by the following general indicators: integrated sustainable development indicator based on the human development index (HDI), gross domestic product per capita, and level of anthropogenic pressure on the environment.