For the period under review, the Portfolio Committee engaged the Department of Environmental Affairs and their Entities on strategic plans, budget votes, policy and legislation. The Portfolio Committee noted that central to the concept of sustainable development is not only the protection of biodiversity and ecological goods and services, but the way in which these can be used to provide jobs and income opportunities for the poor and unskilled. The centrality of national and global imperatives of sustainable development was translated through the implementation of programmes such as the community-based Natural Resource Management and Social Responsibility. These initiatives put the Department at the centre of government's poverty alleviation, job creation and protection and rehabilitation of the environment.