For three years, the State Administration of Affairs (SAA) has misused at least 31 million UAH envisaged for the work of national nature parks. In the next three years, it is planned to spend another 36 million UAH in the similar way. SAA believes that “maintenance of national parks” is the repair of the roof of the state hunting residence “Zalissia” and cabling there high-speed Internet for 1.5 million UAH, or the purchase of food for 4.8 million UAH. At the same time during the recent 7 years, the SAA ignores the execution of three decrees of the President of Ukraine on the reorganization of hunting residences into national parks.
During 2009-2010, the President Victor Yushchenko signed 29 decrees on creation of new national parks, as well as two natural reserves, which was the biggest breakthrough in the history of Ukraine in development of nature conservation. In 2010-2012, majority of special administrations of newly created institutions of the nature reserve fund were established. Exceptions were made for three national parks declared on the territory of state-owned hunting facilities of the State Administration of Affairs – “Zalissya”1 , “Syniohora”2 and “Biloozerske”3.
Despite the dates specified in the Decrees for the reorganization of hunting facilities into national parks, by 2017 no reorganization has taken place. The Ministry of Environment did not appoint directors and staff. Provisions and projects of organization of these new institutions were neither developed nor approved. Letters from the SAA make it obvious that it is not planning to implement the President’s decrees although this institution is directly subordinated to the President of Ukraine. In its letter No. 01-15-1256 dated 07.06.2010, the SAA informed that “Presidential Decrees No. 1048 of 11.12.2009, No. 1049 of 11.12.2009, No. 1083 of 21.12.2009 were issued without sufficient scientific substantiation and proper cartographic materials confirmed by experts of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Ukraine and other state bodies regarding the special environmental, scientific, historical, educational, aesthetic and other values of these natural complexes … “” In addition, at present local self-government bodies and communities do not support creation of national parks. “
In 2014, the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Environmental Policy approved recommendations No. 22/1 of 10.04.2014: “to reorganize state residences” Zalissya “,” Biloozerske “and” Syniohora” into national parks and to pass them over together with the Azov-Syvash National Park into the subordination of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.”
However, in 7 years nothing has changed. This “vehicle” is not moving anywhere although now it has got gold wheels.
In 1993, the Azov-Syvash National Nature Park became part of the SAA system. Due to this, part of the state budget funds intended for national parks is transferred to the SAA. It turned out that while sabotaging the creation of three new national parks, the SAA has been receiving budget funds for four national parks, actually spending them on renovation of their own buildings and other purposes that have nothing to do with nature conservation. Importantly, the funds come directly from the budget program 0301140 “Preservation of the natural reserve fund in national nature parks and reserves”. For example, this year, SAA has used 56 million UAH from this budget program. Over the next 3 years, it is planned to use for “presidential” national parks another 216 million UAH of budget funds. Environmental scientists have studied for what purposes such substantial sums of “environmental funds” are used.
According to the calculations of the budget program, the funds for the maintenance of the lands of the nature reserve fund are calculated for the total area of the allegedly four national parks not counting the fact that three of them in fact still do not exist as institutions and there are no accounts to which money can be transfer transferred. Thus, the salary was calculated for 514 people in 2015, for 510 people in 2016 and for 586 people in 2017. By the way, it is interesting that compared with 20161, the staff of the non-existent national parks subordinate to the SAA increased by 76 employees. However, no administrations were created in any of them, which poses a big question what caused such a change in staffing.
Let’s go back to calculation of the costs of maintaining one hectare of natural reserve fund. From 2015 to 2017, the cost increased from UAH 250 per hectare to UAH 387 per hectare. Since the administrations in the national parks “Syniohora”, “Biloozersky” and “Zalissia”, as well as the Regulations on them do not exist, it is impossible to allocate funds for guarding their territories, since it can only be carried out by their special administrations. Thus, we subtract from the calculations of the economists of SAA part of the funds proportional to the area of the Azov-Syvash naitonal park where really exists the administration, and as a result we will receive the area for which funds were misused (52580 hectares). Thus, over the last 3 years, SAA spent 29 379 thousand UAH on maintenance of non-existent national parks. But this is not the end of the misuse of funds. In 2017, 1,100 thousand UAH was spent on renovation of the hunters’ houses “Zalissya” and “Syniohora”, and 200,000 UAH worth goods2 were purchased for the hunting residence “Zalissya”. Another 485.7 thousand UAH were spent for renovation of “Zalissya” in 2015.3
Summing up our calculaitons we see that in 2015-2017 SAA misused funds of national parks totaling to 31,164.36 thousand UAH. In fact, these are funds that have not been received by the existing institutions of the nature reserve fund and the Ministry of Natural Resources of Ukraine that could have been spent on creation of new national parks.
Analyzing the budget requests of SAA for 2018-20204, we see that the tendency of the previous years is planned to be continued and multiplied. In particular, SAA plans to increase the cost of maintaining one hectare of protected land to 516 UAH (by 75%!). Taking into account the annual figures of the budget request, for the next three years, they plan to steal another 31,149.000 UAH on the maintenance of non-existent national parks. Among the planned 2019-2020 budget lines for non-existent national parks there is one extremely interesting – “food”. It is hard to understand how food products can be used to guard national parks. Nevertheless, it is planned to spend 4 796.1 thousand UAH on this article. So, for the next three years, natural reserves may not receive another 35,945 thousand UAH because they will be misused by SAA.
EPL environmental scientists believe that illegal use of funds envisaged for national parks should be stopped. In addition, since SAA is not a professional institution in the area of the nature reserve fund, it is necessary to transfer the administration of the Azov-Syvash national park into subordination of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Ukraine. After that, the budget line 0301140 “Preservation of the natural reserve fund in national natural parks and reserves” should be deleted from the budget of SAA and these funds should be transferred to the relevant budget line of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which is really engaged in the creation and maintenance of national parks.
