The Verkhovna Rada adopted in the first reading the revised government draft law No. 7327 "On amendments to some legislative acts of Ukraine regarding the state system of environmental monitoring, information on the state of the environment (ecological information) and information support for management in the field of the environment."
The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strilets, said that this draft law is one of the important documents for achieving European standards of living and will start an important reform in the field of monitoring all components of the environment, reports Ministry of Environment on Telegram.
In the message, it was noted that the work of the environmental monitoring system in Ukraine is currently regulated by outdated 20-year-old documents. And most of the equipment, which, for example, is used by the Ukrhydrometeorological center, was purchased back in the 80s and 90s.
The press service of the Ministry of Environment explained that because of this, it is impossible to compare the monitoring data of the Ukrainian system with the data of other countries. In addition, some indicators cannot be measured at all due to missing or broken equipment.
The authors emphasized that the existing system only states the fact of exceeding the pollution index without analyzing the causes and consequences and cannot be the basis for making effective management decisions.
"Today, it is extremely important for Ukraine to develop an effective system for monitoring the state of the environment. After all, it will make it possible to record the real amount of damage caused to the environment and to take the most effective measures to avoid further deterioration of the situation and to restore ecosystems to a safe state – both for humans and for nature," said Strilets.
He also emphasized that draft law No. 7327 "permeates" 18 legislative acts of Ukraine with the principles of environmental monitoring and sets a certain framework.
What the document will change:
- all up-to-date and reliable environmental information will be available 24/7 on the single ecological platform "EkoSistema";
- the need to search for the necessary information about the state of the environment on various resources, in particular in specific regions and communities, will disappear;
- data on the state of the environment in Ukraine will become available on the resources of EU countries, and the Ukrainian monitoring system will be integrated with SEIS – a network of environmental data administered by the European Environmental Agency.
As EcoPolitic reported before, on July 8 Verkhovna Rada rejected and sent for a repeat first reading draft law No. 7327 on the state environmental monitoring system.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that Verkhovna Rada on October 18 took as a basis the government bill No. 8037 "On chemical safety and management of chemical products".
