Arpi Harutyunyan, ArmeniaNow
Environmentalists in Armenia say the year just ended saw the signing of a death certificate for Armenian forests.
The agreement by the Government of Armenia to allow exploitation by the Armenian Copper Program (ACP) of the Teghut copper and molybdenum mine (see ) worries environmentalists as setting a precedent that would further damage the republic’s already-threatened nature.
“Even if we had no other losses in 2007, the Teghut case would be enough to call the year devastating in ecological terms, because the exploitation of the Teghut mine will strike right in the heart of the environmental protection [efforts],” Hakob Sanasaryan, chairman of the Greens’ Union of Armenia mentions.
Environmentalists say 170,833 trees will be logged for the mine exploitation. There are 55,000 rare and 45,000 valuable trees, as well as plants and types of animals registered in the Red Book list in danger of being destroyed.
Unlike Sanasaryan and others, Aram Harutyunyan appointed to the position of the Minister of Environmental Protection in June 2007 believes the Teghut project an achievement rather than a loss.
“The decision on Teghut has not been a mistake; it’s a program approved by law that has passed all the instances. It will operate under the supervision on our side and will bring big income to our state,” Harutyunyan says.
Inga Zarafyan, chairman of Ecolur NGO says permission for exploitation of the Teghut mine indicates the lack of expertise in the sphere of infrastructure development. “Of course, 2007 was signified by the notorious decision on exploitation of the Teghut mine, but the most dangerous thing is that it created a tendency for the large-scale exploitation of natural resources,” Zarafyan says.
Despite the numerous observations of the environmentalists, the minister says 2007 has been largely a year of achievements. He says another large achievement of the year has been the increase of the Lake Sevan level. The data of the ministry show the lake now levels at 1898.79 meters, which is 0.56 meters higher as compared to the last year.
Sanasaryan, however, thinks the government prevented the full-scale solution to the Sevan problem by another decision issued in 2007; the government set the landmark of the wave zone at 1905.5 instead of 1908 preventing the further increase of the lake and legalizing a number of illegal buildings erected on the shore.
The minister insists the observations are groundless. Harutyunyan says achievements have been also in the sphere of increasing the number of fish in the lake. “Owing to a significant ban on fishing this year we provided a full cycle of spawning for the fish,” the minister mentions adding large-scale works have been done to develop plans for the management of national parks.
The ministry has also registered progress in the revenue collection of environmental protection and natural resource use saying they have made 8.5 billion drams ($ 27,868 852) in 2007, 2 billion more ($ 6,557 377) than in 2006.
The Armenian branch of the World Wild Life Fund says one of the achievements of last year has been the work aimed at the protection of fauna, particularly the passing of the RA Law on Hunting and the Management of Hunting Enterprises.
“Adoption of such a law will be both a preventive measure against illegal hunting and will set clear rules for the legal hunting types, something that was not done previously,” the director of the WWF Armenian branch Karen Manvelyan says. He says legislation is a tool that needs constant amendment, something the Republic of Armenia did in 2007.
The minister who says the ministry has adopted about 112 legal acts in 2007 is the first to witness the latter. However, despite the amount of achievements, Aida Iskoyan, chairwoman of the Environmental Legal Protection Center mentions she would prefer if the year were rounded up with a comprehensive framework legislation for environmental policy. “No matter how many separate laws and legal acts there are, it’s all the same – the environmental protection needs a mother law, because without it the sphere is like a headless person,” Iskoyan mentions. Minister Harutyunyan found it difficult to identify the shortcomings of the year.
“I wouldn’t like us to go much into the details of the matter,” the minister summarized.
January 11, 2008