The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine has failed to approve the composition of the commission that is supposed to consider the application for the creation of 13 new protected areas in 3 months.
This was reported by the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center (KECC).
Its activists said that on February 7, the Department of Ecology of the Kyiv Regional State Administration appealed to the Ministry of Ecology to agree on the creation of 13 new protected areas and the change of boundaries of 3 protected areas, as well as the closure of one previously created protected area in the Kyiv region.
The KECC claims that this is a purely formal approval, but in three months, the Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Viktoriia Kireeva, who oversees the protected areas in the ministry, has not paid attention to this request of the Department.
According to the environmental activists, they have repeatedly appealed to the leadership of the Department of Nature Reserve Fund at the Ministry of Environment and received a response that Victoria Kireeva has not yet approved the composition of the commission that is supposed to consider such requests. The KECC noted that according to the Law “On the Nature Reserve Fund of Ukraine,” such a commission is not required to be established.
The environmentalists reminded that according to the Law of Ukraine “On the Basic Principles (Strategy) of the State Environmental Policy of Ukraine for the Period up to 2030”, the Ministry of Environment should expand the area of the nature reserve fund of Ukraine to 15% of the country's area within this period. The KECC says that the current figure is about 6%, and every year fewer protected areas are created in Ukraine. The activists are convinced that the Ministry “does nothing at all to increase the creation of protected areas.”
“That is, the Ministry of Ecology is in a serious stupor in the development of the protected area business. And instead of helping environmental NGOs like the KECC, which prepare materials for the creation of new protected areas for free, Deputy Minister Viktoria Kireeva is slowing down this work,” the environmentalists believe.
They reminded that forests are being cut down every day, and it may happen that the 13 new forest areas proposed by the KECC for conservation will be cut down and lose their ecological value, and the work done by the Center will be in vain. The activists named a very rare orchid, the cuckoo's slipper, among the rare plants that we may lose because of the ministry's delays.
Recently, EcoPolitic prepared an article about the personnel changes in the Ministry of Ecology that took place during the term of Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk, who almost completely renewed the team of the previous Minister Ruslan Strilets.
We also talked about the Verkhovna Rada's support for a 50-fold increase in fines for violations in protected areas.
