The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has amended four of its resolutions adopted earlier. In particular, they provide for the abolition of the approval of quotas for the extraction of minerals, as well as technological maps for logging in the territories of the nature reserve fund.
The text of Resolution No. 401 “On Amendments to Certain Resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on the Abolition of Irrelevant Instruments of State Regulation in the Field of Environmental Protection”, which enshrines these changes, was published on the government's website.
First of all, it should be noted that the text of the adopted resolution differs significantly from the draft prepared and published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine in late January. Back then, the agency proposed to amend three documents:
- The Procedure for the Special Use of Forest Resources;
- Regulations on the procedure for issuing permits for the special use of natural resources within the territories and objects of the nature reserve fund;
- Regulation on the procedure for setting limits on the use of natural resources of national importance.
In the final version approved by the government, two more documents were added to these:
- The Procedure for Harvesting Secondary Forest Materials and Conducting Side Forest Uses in the Forests of Ukraine;
- Rules for logging in the main use in the mountain forests of the Carpathians.
What has changed
- Minerals have been excluded from the list of natural resources for which a special use permit is issued within the territories and objects of the nature reserve fund. Previously, this permit was issued by the Ministry of Environment.
- Also, minerals were excluded from the Regulation on the Procedure for Setting Limits on the Use of Natural Resources of National Importance. In the draft resolution, the ministry proposed to exclude forest resources, but in the approved text of the resolution, they remained, but minerals were excluded.
- Clause 3 was also removed from the Regulation, as suggested by the Ministry. It stipulated that the limits (quotas) for the extraction of minerals, except for common minerals, and their validity periods are approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine upon the proposal of the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Environment, agreed with the regional state administrations
- The harvesting of hay containing Red Book plants was banned. The provision requiring that the haying period be specified in the forest ticket was removed.
- The need to coordinate with the territorial bodies of the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine and regional state administrations additional timber harvesting within the limits of the existing estimated forest area not used in previous years during the main use logging was abolished.
- Technological maps regarding silvicultural requirements in the mountain forests of the Carpathians no longer need to be approved by the territorial bodies of the State Forestry Agency, and the requirement to approve them with regional state administrations has been canceled when logging on the territory and objects of the nature reserve fund.
How the Ministry of Environment justified the need for changes
In the Regulatory Impact Analysis to the draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers, its authors stated the following reasons:
- The permit for the special use of natural resources in terms of the use of minerals is an outdated and irrelevant tool, since “today the use of all types of subsoil, regardless of their location, including hydrocarbons on the continental shelf, is carried out on the basis of a special permit for the use of subsoil, which is regulated by the Subsoil Code of Ukraine.” According to officials, not a single such permit has been issued in the last 2 years.
- Most of the forestry permits proposed to be canceled by this resolution are illegal, as the need to obtain them is not defined at the level of special laws, as required by Article 5 of the Law of Ukraine “On Administrative Services”.
- The instrument of “approval of technological maps in relation to forestry requirements” is defined only at the subordinate legislation level, and it is not provided for at the level of the Forest Code of Ukraine. There is also no procedure for such approval with the territorial bodies of the State Forestry Agency. The regulation also does not specify the powers of regional departments to issue such approval. According to the State Forestry Agency, 3190 such approvals were granted in 2021, and 3248 in 2022. That is, every year more than 3,000 business entities are forced to spend money on preparing and submitting documents to obtain a deliberately illegal instrument of state regulation, the analysis says.
In January, EcoPolitic reported that the Ministry of Environment wants to cancel certain permits and approvals for forests and subsoil.
