• Involves initiation of agreed programs and projects, solidification of policy reforms and institutional arrangements, routinization of the overall process, and installation of monitoring and evaluation procedures.
• Success will depend on sustaining both investments and institutional deve-lopment programs over the long term.
• Importance of continuity: gains obtained in short and medium term can easily be lost by the failure to follow through with needed actions in subsequent stages
• Key activities: initiating programs and projects to implement the EMS and EAP, building environmental planning and management capacities, and monitoring and evaluating progress.

General Advantages and Limits of the Methodology

In terms of:

1. the utility of the methodology
2. areas that would benefit from further inquiry or different research approaches

Advantages of the general approach:

1. is rapid
2. costs relatively little
3. centralizes diverse information
4. benefits from local access to information

Disadvantages:

1. Methodology generates purely descriptive information
2. Relies on existing sources of information
3. Results cannot always be used for comparison between cities: information applies to different time periods, was derived in a different manner, or is based on a different sample.
4. Sample of cities in which rapid assessments were conducted is neither large enough nor randomly chosen so as to be statistically representative.

• No major statutory requirements necessary
• Importance of local legislation that would mandate the conduct of RUEA, including manpower and other required resources and actual utilization of findings by the local government