The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the State Anti-corruption Program for 2023-2025, in which 40 out of 1,700 measures belong to the sphere of environmental protection.
Among the anti-corruption tools, the government proposes strengthening digitalization and publicizing up-to-date information on natural resources, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources reports on Facebook.
It is noted that anti-corruption measures will also include:
- release of open data during martial law;
- updating of neighborhood registers;
- creation of new and development of existing IT systems and their integration into "EcoSystem" to bring online all services in the field of environmental protection;
- continuation of the national inventory of forests;
- annual monitoring of the effectiveness of the functioning of the unified state system of electronic wood accounting for all permanent forest users;
- monitoring and systematization of data on the sale of 100% raw wood at auctions, etc.
The press service emphasized that the Ministry of Environment has purposefully implemented anti-corruption measures in recent years, in particular related to digitalization and deregulation. Thus, in 2021, the Ministry launched a single state environmental platform "EkoSystem" and continues to transfer services to an online format.
"EkoSystem" is already used by almost 13,000 Ukrainians. During this time, they received almost 5,000 services online, some of which were done without the participation of a civil servant at all," the message reads.
The press service added that in 2023 the government started work on creating a "Free Regulatory Environment". Ukraine has set a goal of making a leap from a transition economy to a developing economy within ten years. And deregulation is one of the steps towards this goal.
It is noted that according to the conclusions of the Interdepartmental Working Group, 40.7% of available environmental services in the field of environmental protection should be provided in digital format. Of these, 22% have already been actually implemented or are at the stage of digitalization completion. Almost another 45% need to be canceled due to obsolescence and inefficiency. A quarter of them duplicate the assessment of the impact on the environment, and for obtaining some, since their introduction, there have never been any requests from entrepreneurs.
"Zero tolerance for corruption, elimination of any corruption risks and construction of a triangle of interaction between the state-society-business - this is what works in Europe. And this is what Ukraine, which today is on the European integration path, should implement. In the field of environmental protection, it is important for us to build such a system under which Ukraine will effectively take care of its natural resources, following the path of sustainable development and rapid post-war reconstruction. Only in this way will we be able to increase the level of citizens' trust in the authorities, show real results and changes to our European partners," said Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strelets.
Earlier, EcoPoltic wrote, that in the European Commission's analytical report on Ukraine's ability to fulfill the conditions of EU membership in the environmental protection cluster, the country received the lowest score – 1 out of a possible 5.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, a recording of a telephone conversation appeared on the Internet, in which a man with a voice similar to the voice of People's Deputy from the "Sluga Narodu" faction Igor Negulevskyi shared plans to take control of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection and get $200 million from it.
