Eu Induced Institutional Change in Post-Soviet Space: Promoting Reforms in Moldova and Ukraine by Ryhor Nizhnikau

Author:Ryhor Nizhnikau [Nizhnikau, Ryhor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351337175
Google: Y1JmDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 40627562
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Environmental governance: acquiring rights in 2011–2017

Environmental rights to participate and access information were at the forefront of the national agenda since the early 2010s. The early experience of the reform process under the Association Agenda, in which the environmental issues were largely sidelined, a weakness of the state environmental bodies that were supposed to promote the environmental agenda, and battles with the government to access information and participate in the rulemaking, primarily signalled at a crucial necessity to acquire legal rights. The non-state stakeholders regarded ability to access information to participate in decision-making as a prerequisite for advancing any reform goals.

Both the Association Agenda and the Association Agreement included provisions for strengthening cooperation on environmental governance at local, national and regional levels. Similar international obligations within the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) and Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in Transboundary Context (Espoo Convention) as well as the Protocol concerning accession of Ukraine to the Treaty establishing the Energy Community Treaty (2010) were regularly violated.

The advancement of environmental democracy and the creation of the sustainable infrastructure for more participatory and deliberative institutions in the environmental protection sector was linked directly with the creation of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedures. These priorities provide for the open access to environmental information and establish legal mechanisms for public participation in decision-making.

Since the 2010s, a number of environment groups, in particular ‘MAMA-86’ and the Civic Expert Council (CEC UPC), pressured to include and promote provisions on environmental governance. They demanded to create conditions for the public to create a tripartite dialogue on the environmental and sustainable development established between the European Commission, the government and non-state actors and engage in the debate over the environmental chapter of the Association Agreement (EaP-Cfs 2013).

Until 2011, the Ukraine’s environmental governance was based on a post-Soviet state expertiza. The state environmental expertiza (‘environmental impact assessment’ in EU terms) was the main instrument to prevent environmental and societal damage. It obliged and procured the relevant agencies to carry an assessment of possible risks in order to provide permits for planned activities. It was primarily regulated by the Law on ‘Protection of natural environment’ adopted in June 1991, the Law ‘On ecological expertize’ (expertiza) adopted in July 1995, the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers on ‘The Order of submitting documents for state expertiza’ adopted in October 1995 as well as the State construction norms on Environmental Impact Assessment А.2.2–1 in 2003.

However, as Ukraine’s regulatory system in general, it was not only plagued with corruption, but also deemed ineffective. Ukraine lacked clear mechanisms of carrying out expertiza, which did not include provisions for risk assessment into strategic planning. There were no clear-cut criteria for holding expertiza aside for cases which were regulated by the law, leaving it to the discretion of the state officials, who in turn used methodologies developed during the Soviet Union in their work (Andrusevich 2009: 12). As a

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