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The Parliament of Georgia adopts draft law on „Environmental Liability“
The Parliament of Georgia has adopted the draft law on “Environmental Liability” at the Parliamentary hearing. The draft law has been drafted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia and aims at setting forth legislative remedies for damage prevention, softening or eradication. As a core objective of the law, damage caused to the environment will be followed with significant economic consequences.The Law on “Environmental Liability” has been elaborated upon the principle of “the polluter pays”; in a scenario when significant damage is caused to an environment, the respective enterprise will be imposed with an obligation to deploy remediation actions to restore environment to the primary or original state. Each of the required actions will be indicated in the plan, which will be scrutinized as guidelines for companies.
Prior to launching actions, enterprises will accumulate financial guarantees/resources for remediating damage to an environment, thus possessing sufficient financial means for undertaking actions in the nearest period of time.
Funds accumulated after monetary remediation will be deployed to the “Environmental Damage Fund”. The similar Funds have been successfully operating in the European Union; however, Georgia will be the first country among the Eastern Partnership framework to establish such Fund. Deployed funds will be generated and applied to planning-implementing activities for remediation of damaged territories and enhancing environment.
Part of the legislative amendments to the Law on Environmental Liability, including to the Law on Georgia on Ambient Air Protection will be enacted in 2021. The remaining articles of the Law on Environmental Liability will be enacted on July 1, 2022.