EcoLur
On 17 September the discussion of the initial version of “Assessing National Capacities of National Environmental Security” program was held with the stakeholders at Mariott hotel. Azganush Drnoyan, Chief Expert at “Environmental Expertise” SNCO of Nature Protection Ministry valued the role of environmental expertise in the environmental system in her interview with EcoLur. “Our experience in numerous projects connected with the Asian Development Bank projects and other projects show that public notification is not carried out properly. Several times just hearing some chunks of information from several places, we tried to take part in the public hearings of the Asian Development Bank and we could se that there was almost no representative from the public sector. Public notification issue should be regulated to organize public hearings properly,” said Silva Adamyan, Coordinator of Public Environmental Alliance. ADB national expert Arman Vermishyan, “In the regions where NGOs actively operate, NGO ensure public notification and they people are actively involved in the process, but we experience serious problems in the regions where NGO support lacks.” “Forests of Armenia” NGO Chairman Nazeli Vardanyan thinks that the public participation in the public hearings under the new law on “On Environmental Impact Assessment and Expertise” has formal nature. As an example, she outlined Amulsar gold mining project, “All adjacent villages oppose to Amulsar project, but the developed arranges only with the village head, but the whole village is against: there are no mechanisms to take the villagers’ opinion into consideration.”
September 18, 2014 at 12:54