By Niyonkuru Patric
Rwanda Environment Management Authority organized a national environment tour from 27th to 31stMay 2024. Only the youths from different universities, media houses and NGOs participated, under the theme of land restoration, desertification and drought resilience with the young people.
This tour was organized under the purpose of showing them what has been achieved in 30 years ago in preservation and conservation of environment in Rwanda.
On behalf of Rwanda government through Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA),
The activities of restoring wetlands, Parks, lakes, were so hard to do, because of natives’ mentality. Many People didn’t want to leave wetlands to be conserved as they were used in their farming activities.
A lot of efforts were made by REMA to get sustainability in environmental protection. In over 20 years, they have restored Rugezi wetland, Kabare Lake, Gishwati-Mukura Park and other ecosystem places.
Liliane Irakoze one of the participants said that it was a great opportunity to explore all these environmental beauties of which some are used in medication.
“It is a pleasure to be involved in this tour, firstly I want to appreciate our government for thinking about the youths, we saw features like metamorphic rocks, pits, and traditional plants used by ancestors for treatment such as umukunde, umuravumba. As students in medicine, this helps us much” Liliane Irakoze said.
The REMA representatives advised participants to protect all achieved things and to think about what to do for building resilience in preservation and conservation of environment as future generation.
“We urge the young people to be the guardians of the future, take care of these three important things- ownership, sustainability, commitment and use your all efforts in the development of this country, not only in environment” said the Deputy Director General of REMA Faustin Munyazikwiye.
He promised the youth who participated in the tour to support them in different projects related with environment protection, and to keep preparing more tours in order to improve awareness.
Faustin Munyazikwiye Deputy Director General of REMA (Photo: REMA)
