Olya Melen, a 26-year old lawyer who used legal channels to temporarily halt construction of a Danube canal, has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Melen directs the legal unit at Environment-People-Law in Lviv, Ukraine. Melen argued successfullly that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the canal, which had been approved by the Minister of Environment, was inadequate. A Ukrainian judge ruled that the canal development flouted environmental laws and could adversely affect the Danube Delta’s biodiversity.
Aware that Ukraine was bound by numerous international agreements, Environment-People-Law raised the issue with the Aarhus and Espoo Conventions' compliance mechanisms to force the Ukrainian Government to justify its canal construction plan. In response to one of the first communications received from a public interest organization, the Aarhus Convention's Compliance Committee reviewed Ukraine's compliance with the Convention in 2004. It found that by failing to ensure that information about the canal construction was provided by the responsible public authorities upon request and failing to provide for adequate public participation in the EIA, Ukraine is not in compliance with articles 4 and 6 of the Aarhus Convention. The finding was later upheld by the Meeting of the Parties to the Aarhus Convention in May 2005.
Melen was named among six winners of world’s largest prize for grassroots environmentalists by the San Francisco-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund on 24 April 2006. The Prize includes 125,000 USD awarded to each of the recipients drawn from six of the continents of the world.
http://www.goldmanprize.org/node/143.
