Silva Adamyan, coordinator of the Public Ecological Alliance, says that the law passed on June 21 contradicts the demands of the Aarhus Convention signed and verified by Armenia, it does not stem from the environmental and democratic principles of the country, does not contribute to the resolution of environmental problems.
“The law contextually contradicts the demands of the Aarhus Convention signed and verified by Armenia. The purpose of adopting a new law was supposed to be verifying the functioning law’s deficiencies, developing and improving legal regulations, but the mentioned law does not solve these problems, moreover, it stipulates unclear complicated processes creating new problems, contradicting the international legal norms,” Adamyan said. “Before the adoption of the new law, the Armenian law “On Environmental Impact Evaluation and Expertise” adopted in 1995 was in effect, and during this time the Compliance Committee of the Aarhus Convention four times made a decision emphasizing the non-compliance of the Armenia law with the practice, demanding that Armenia bring its legislation in conformity with the Convention.”
Environmentalists mention that the legislators adopted the new law without considering all that. According to Armenian Forests NGO President Nazeli Vardanyan, the most important factor was not preserved – public participation in any environment-related decision-making.
“According to the new law, all types of actions are divided into three groups and public participation in these three groups must be realized on different degrees. For instance, in case of small HPPs there is no more need to organize public discussions, just evaluation will be enough to give license. The law is worded in an abstruse manner whereas the Aarhus Convention demands that the law be worded so that common people can read and understand it,” she said.
Environmentalists believe that incomplete realization of the Aarhus Convention demands will have a negative impact on foreign investments and project funding in the environmental field.
Environmentalist Levon Galstyan participated for the first three months in the works of the group dealing with law drafting, then he quit seeing that no specialists capable of writing a correct law were included in the working group.
“Most importantly responsibility is missing. We voiced this question several times while writing the law but fruitlessly. We were not able to introduce the ideology that when a certain area’s residents, public has negative attitude toward the project, the Ministry of Nature Protection must give a negative conclusion. It was impossible, which means that everything is pointless, whatever is discussed is pointless,” Galstyan said.
He thinks it is impossible to write a new law with the methodology and professional skills existing in the country.
A number of environmental organizations sent a letter to the country’s president, mentioning that the law contains many errors, gaps having been mentioned at various occasions by local and international experts, however the Ministry of Nature Protection again gave assurances that all suggestions were considered and a new version was introduced at the same time leaving the draft unchanged, with the deficiencies.
“Armenia does not follow its responsibilities in accordance with the Convention, Armenia’s reputation briskly descended among international structures, the Convention is not fully realized in Armenia, the public is deprived of the opportunity to participate in Convention processes, and citizens and public organizations’ rights defined by the Convention are constantly violated which creates distrust toward the government and adds up to public discontent. It is not without reason that during the fifth meeting of the Convention parties Armenia was found to be a country that does not comply with the Convention,” the letter addressed to the Armenian president reads.
The environmentalists ask President Serzh Sargsyan to return the law “On Environmental Impact Evaluation and Expertise” to the National Assembly for a new discussion.
