Assessment of the Country's Development Plans in the Field of Environment and Providing Strategies for the Seventh Plan

Examining the evolution of the environment in the documents of the five-year development plans has shown attention to this category, especially in the sixth development plan; According to Article (2) of the Law of the Sixth Development Plan, the environment has been designated as a special and strategic subject of the plan. Moreover, in the ninth section of the sixth development program law of the country, under article (38), measures for the government to improve the environment are provided. This article, while analyzing the environmental issues using previous studies and receiving the opinions of experts, identified 31 issues in the seven major axes of integrated management of the land, financial and economic mechanisms, social and cultural mechanisms, law and legal mechanisms, monitoring systems and environmental monitoring mechanisms, organizational structure and international interactions and cooperation. In this regard, based on the performance-importance analysis and according to the opinions of environmental experts, fourteen priority strategic issues of the seventh plan have been identified. A strong and firm executive guarantee for the enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, the protection of the country's environmental resources (water, forests, pastures, etc.), the amount of damage caused by environmental destruction in Iran, and the economic valuation of ecosystems and environmental resources have been identified among the priority issues of the seventh program in the field of environment. Finally, Various strategies such as strengthening the monitoring capacity of the Department of Environment, establishing a comprehensive environmental assessment system, improving the integrated environmental monintoring system, proportioning environmental crimes to the destroyed economic value, and strengthening environmental diplomacy have been proposed for the preparation of the seventh plan.