Information and Public Relations Department of Nature Protection Ministry
The discussions of the initial results of “Support to the Reforms of SHPPs through a Dialogue between the Public and The Ministry of Nature Protection of the RA for the Purpose of River Ecosystem Use” Program were held with Nature Protection Minister Aramayis Grigoryan’s chair.
He welcomed the participants of the discussions and valued public sector-governmental department cooperation and outlined, “In the frames of this program very important works are carried out: attempts are made to check the efficiency of SHPP operation and to detect the current problems which will enable the government to clearly present the extent of operating SHPPs and their adversary effect on environment in future. Monitoring results will enable us to pose clear requirements of improvement program before the SHPPs to make sure in future that operating SHPPs don’t pose any hazard.”
The Nature Protection Minister thanked the members of the NGO implementing this project, Nature Protecting Ministry experts and experts involved from other organizations for the huge work they had carried out. Out of planned 100 SHPPs the results of monitoring over 62 SHPPs have already been presented.
“Support to the Reforms of SHPPs through a Dialogue between the Public and The Ministry of Nature Protection of the RA for the Purpose of River Ecosystem Use” program coordinator Inga Zarafyan noted in her turn that information database may be created based on the monitoring results of 100 SHPPs, which will enable familiarizing with the situation of SHPPs. The program also has a social component, which will reveal the impact of SHPPs on the social condition of the community residents. According to the experts, the monitoring is carried out under 75 criteria. It’s planned to provide so-called green passports to SHPPs, the format of which is still in discussions.
Speaking about the idea of green passports, Aramayis Grigoryan particularly mentioned that a green passport won’t be issued as such, “It’s a certificate about the current state of SHPP, technical equipment, compliance with environmental components, which will decide the opportunities of cooperation between SHPP owner and other bodies (governmental bodies and loaning organizations), i.e. if everything is ok in the SHPP or there were omission, which were solved within improvements programs, as exemplary SHPPs they will be given green light to taking out loans, issuing water usage permits and electricity.”
“Support to the Reforms of SHPPs through a Dialogue between the Public and The Ministry of Nature Protection of the RA for the Purpose of River Ecosystem Use” program database specialist Victoria Burnazyan summed the results of the first stage of project implementation. The speaker presented the data of 62 SHPP visits, detected drawbacks, as well as exemplary cases.
Nature Protection Minister Aramayis Grigoryan once again outlined that works shall be carried out for each SHPP, they shall develop and implement individual improvement programs to minimize their adversary effect on environment, otherwise relevant measures will be taken.
November 06, 2015 at 17:05