In order to base its economic and social development on an ecologically viable basis and to contribute to the global dynamic of sustainable development, Togo began an environmental planning and management process in 1989, which led to the development of the National Environmental Action Plan (PNAE).

This document constitutes a strategic framework for reflection, consultation, programming and actions that makes it possible to identify and prioritize environmental priorities, in order to develop an effective system for planning and managing natural resources and the environment in the perspective of sustainable development. The lessons learned from the short-term experiences of several National Environmental Action Plans in Africa have led to the approach of PNAE-TOGO from the perspective of an open process whose development is only an interim result. Because of its great openness, which makes it possible to take into account the concerns of the various actors in national socio-economic life, the process makes it possible to stimulate the ecological awareness of the various categories of actors and decision-makers and to make them take into account the environmental dimension in the planning and management of the country's development programs and projects.

This philosophy is expressed concretely through a number of intervention programs grouped under the name of the National Environmental Management Program (PNGE) intended to break and reverse the vicious circle in which economic and social development has become bogged down in the absence of a clear vision of the dynamic interdependencies that exist between Environment and Development. More than an environmental sprinkle intended to “somewhat green up” the productivist-type sectoral approaches that still characterize development planning in all areas, the PNAE constitutes, in its foundations and strategic guidelines, “a remedy” and “a safeguard” intended to make good environmental management the barometer of economic and social development.

The challenge that the Togolese Economy in all its components proposes to meet, through the PNAE, is to reconcile in a global participatory approach the requirements of environmental quality with those no less imperative of increasing productivity and economic profitability, in a fluctuating national and international context.