EPL participated online in High-Level Conference on ‘RebuildUkraine’ and Civil Dialogue, organized by European Environmental Bureau, with participation of the EU institutions representatives.
EPL presented its vision on the role of civil society in Ukraine, in rebuilding Ukraine and launching key environmental reforms, in particular the reform of state environmental control. Below there is EPL statement voiced by Olya Melen-Zabramna, head of EPL legal department.
The war in Ukraine urged the government and civil society to speed up the reforms in Ukraine in many sectors, including environmental reforms and to react to the new challenges resulting from the war. The civil society took over this task and successfully aids the government and local authorities in coping with the challenges, problems and using opportunities.
Our organization “Environment-People-Law” – Ukrainian think tank and advocacy center, has been active in advocating major environmental reforms that are necessary for Ukraine’s full EU member status. Such reforms include the following: waste management reform, reform of state environmental control and enforcement, environmental liability, environmental monitoring and introduction of an integrated environmental permit. We started the advancement of these reforms before the war from wide awareness raising activities and sharing successful EU experience and legislation in relevant fields. Almost 3 years ago, EPL became the main driving force behind the Law on new State Environmental Inspectorate, preparing the first drafts of this law, conducting consultations with stakeholders. We understand that lack of proper environmental control and enforcement is undermining the effectiveness and sustainability of all the planned urgent environmental reforms and current environmental legislation implementation.
Being aware of crucially low institutional capacities of the State Environmental Inspectorate, lack of action when the war started, legislative limitations of its mandate, EPL raised the issue of the need to document environmental damage at an early stage and importance of collecting evidence of such damage for future legal claims on the international level.
For this purpose, EPL has been active in collecting evidence of environmental damage, managing EPL’s online database of cases of environmental damage, doing site visits and taking samples of polluted soils, analysing satellite images and data on forest fires and forest shelling etc. We believe the State Environmental Inspectorate and the Prosecution Office are not sufficiently active in collecting evidence of environmental crimes caused by the war, their work is often fragmented and lacks credibility. Thus, relevant help from the EU is very much needed.
Also EPL works to safeguard environmental democracy at this challenging time when under the pretext of protecting national security interests the Parliament and the government tend to limit human rights and access to many environmental resources and database, lifting obligations regarding public hearings,cancelling some environmental permits and assessments. EPL has prepared legal analysis of limitations imposed on access to environmental information during the war time, with focus also on compliance with the Aarhus Convention.
EPL is also monitoring and commenting draft laws prepared in the war time aimed at facilitation of rebuilding Ukraine by local municipalities and businesses in order to ensure that environmental concerns are taken into account and there are no unreasoned waivers for environmental permitting.
EPL also understands the importance of green reconstruction of Ukraine, in particular in the areas heavily damaged by the hostilities. Thus, EPL prepared the publication entitled “Planning the environment remediation”, which is available on EPL’s web-site at http://epl.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EPL_Vidnovlennya_dovkillya_ENG_2022.pdf . In this study EPL tried to make connection with the EU policies and the European Green Deal in particular, with the EU legislation and best case studies of recovery projects worldwide.
Our tasks for the future:
Key environmental reforms must be launched by the Parliament of Ukraine in the nearest future, to safeguard that reconstruction of Ukraine will follow green and sustainable path.
Right now the most important is the reform of state environmental control, which has a goal to introduce the best methods and rules of environmental control and enforcement functioning in EU member states. Such reform needs huge advocacy efforts on behalf of civil society because members of the parliament and business associations are opposing this reform. Therefore, assistance of the EU institutions in launching this reform in Ukraine after the approval of the Law on the State Environmental Inspectorate by the Parliament will be really valuable.
It has been 9 months since the war started and we can state that the efforts of the State Environmental Inspectorate towards documenting environmental crimes caused by the war and collecting evidence for potential are insufficient. Thus, it is important to stress the urgent need for raising institutional capacity of the current environmental inspectorate including technical capacities of its branches to conduct timely and effective monitoring of environmental damage caused to the environment by the war.
