EcoLur
On 21 June the National Assembly adopted the new law “Environmental Impact Assessment and Expertise” in three readings in one day. As public thinks this law meets business interests and not nature interests. The environmentalists have addressed a letter to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. The letter says,
“Respectable Mr. President,
We are applying to you expecting for a solution to an important environmental and legal issue for the Republic of Armenia.
On 21 June the National Assembly adopted RA Law “Environmental Impact Assessment and Expertise”, while its content contradicts to the requirements of the Aarhus Convention concluded and ratified by Armenia, it doesn’t come from the environmental and democratic principles of or country, it doesn’t promote the solution of the environmental problems. The purpose of adopting a new law is to eliminate the drawbacks of the existing law, to develop and improve legal regulations, nevertheless, the aforementioned law not only doesn’t solve these problems, but causes new problems by setting an unclear and complicated process and contradicts to the international legal standards. Before adopting a new law, RA Law “On Environmental Impact Expert assessment” was in force (1995), and during its term the Aarhus Compliance Committee made a decision four times outlining incompliance of the Armenian legislation and practice with the Aarhus Convention and required to make amendments to the legislation making it compliant with the provisions of the Convention. It particularly says that the processes of environmental expert assessment, as well as public participation mechanisms should be simplified, all kinds of obstacles should be eliminated, nevertheless, the new law makes these processes more complicated, it minimizes public participation in these processes and doesn’t set clear mechanisms. Besides, the Aarhus Compliance Committee mentioned that the public shall be made aware of decision-making processes as soon as possible, i.e. the statutory 30 days of noticing shall be prolonged, but the new law reduced it and made it 7 days. Then the committee outlined that the obligations of different actors in the public participation (governmental bodies, local self-government bodies) shall be separated for more clearness. If the law of 1995 clearly laid down the obligations of bodies participating in environmental expertise in public noticing, the new law has no certain distribution of obligations and the sequence of the stages is not clear.
Armenia doesn’t perform the obligations it undertook by the convention, the rating of Armenia has drastically reduced in international bodies, the convention is not applied in Armenia properly, the public sector has been deprived of participating the processed prescribed by the Convention, the rights of citizens and NGOs laid down in the convention are always violated, which causes in non-confidence towards the Government and increases public concerns.
All this will affect in foreign investments and project funding in environment.
Based on the aforementioned we would like to ask you, guided by Article 55(2) of the Armenian Constitution, give back RA Law “Environmental Impact Assessment and Expertise” to the National Assembly and to demand a new discussion.
Thanks in advance
Silva Adamyan – Coordinator of Public Environmental Alliance
Nazeli Vardanyan - “Forests of Armenia” NGO
Greta Gabrielyan – “Environmental Academy” NGO
Arthur Hambardzumyan - independent expert
Aram Grigoryan – independent expert
Seyran Minasyan - independent expert
7.07.2014”.
July 08, 2014 at 14:01