National Strategy for Sustainable Development.

The National Strategy for Sustainable Development (Strategy) is a cross-sectoral national strategy developed by the Government of Lithuania in 2009 and to be implemented until 2020. Its main objective is to combine environmental protection, economic and social development concerns, ensure a clean and healthy environment, effective consumption of natural resources, universal economic welfare of the society and strong social guarantees; and, during its implementation period to achieve, in terms of economic and social indicators as well as efficiency of natural resource consumption while keeping the environmental pollution indicators within the limits permissible and respecting the requirements imposed by the international conventions limiting environmental pollution and impact on climate change. Two periods of the Strategy implementation have been identified: one for the achievement of its short-term strategic objectives (until 2012) and one for the achievement of its long-term strategic objectives (until 2020). The Strategy will ensure that consumers are provided with high-quality food products matching the nutritional needs.
In terms of agriculture, the long-term objectives of the Strategy include the creation of an economically efficient and competitive agriculture, based on farming with a lower environmental impact; development of organic farms and production of high-quality certified agricultural and food products; conservation of natural resources; and the short-term objectives of the Strategy include reduction of the environmental impact of agriculture, particularly in the ecologically vulnerable areas, improvement of the economic and legal environment for the development of traditional (especially small and medium-sized) organic farms, increasing the competitiveness of small and medium-sized farms, and providing the consumer with high-quality food products matching the nutritional needs. In addition, the Strategy has long and short term objectives to ensure environmental quality. They seek to address the air, climate change, water, landscape and biological diversity, and waste management.
In terms of poverty, the long-term objectives of the objective are to increase personal incomes of the residents, including in rural areas, to reduce the differentiation and poverty of the society, to establish adequate working conditions, and to achieve effective social security; and the mid-term objectives are to ensure adequate compensation of lost income for the recipients of social insurance benefits, especially pensions; to extend social support to the persons who need it the most; to ensure for every member of the social exclusion groups at least the minimum economic and social security; and to eradicate extreme poverty.
The Strategy will seek to encourage small and medium-sized farms to shift to non-traditional alternative crop-production and animal husbandry and to adopt more productive and less polluting farming methods; to employ economic instruments to promote the establishment of small agricultural production processing enterprises; and to promote organic farming in ecologically sensitive areas.
The Strategy will seek to ensure air quality that is safe for human health and compliant with the requirements throughout the national territory, to achieve a situation when the growth of emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gasses is two times slower than the growth of production and services, and to eliminate the consumption of ozone depleting substances.
In order to implement the monitoring of the Strategy and to carry out a change and causal links analysis, the Minister of Environment established an Expert Group for the Assessment of the Progress in the Implementation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy and for the Development of the Respective Guidelines.