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Minister Davitashvili: “As a well-established practice in Western Europe, Georgia will initiate Environmental Fund”
“I shall embrace progress achieved by Georgia upon adopting new systems of environmental liability. I would like to express my gratitude toward an incumbent and previous Parliaments for their meaningful engagement.2020 has been a turning point for adopting new systems of environmental liability in Georgia and decreasing hazardous emissions from industrial sector. It is a vital reform, which enhances ecological environment and shapes a new system of reliability, which complements European best practices and policies. The core principle derives from an understanding that if an enterprise pollutes and significantly harms environment, then, the latter enterprise is kept accountable and will be imposed with a liability to deploy funds for eradicating the damage. As a meaningful and effective remedy - a large-scale enterprises, which constitute to risks of polluting environment will be imposed with an obligation to undertake financial insurance of environmental risks from 2023. In case an enterprise pollutes and does not deploy actions for eradicating damage in a timely manner – then, consequences will be significant. Georgia will be the first country in Eastern Europe to establish an Environmental Fund. As a common practice in Western Europe, these Funds ensure that incumbent and formerly polluted sites are recovered through providing local authorities with financial means to address the challenges, recover polluted areas and channel funding to projects that will safeguard ecology in the future. Meanwhile, large enterprises, such as metallurgy, chemical and other enterprises that will be imposed with an obligation for decreasing hazardous emissions into air; such liability will set forth as an obligation to install modern filtration systems and deployment of self-monitoring appliances. As an effective legislation, the latter will be enacted in an incumbent year. Drafting process enjoyed consecutive liaison with business, as well as meaningful engagement of civil society to feature each and every interest of the society and translate actions into improving wellbeing of local dwellers at industrial cities. We have joined forces with our international partners to ensure capacity building of the Ministry, thus, tangible outcomes will be harvested during an incumbent year, such as – formation of a new direction at the Department of Environmental Supervision that will safeguard implementation of the legislation.
The same package entails “Rustavi Atmospheric Air Action Plan for 2020-2022”, which aims at deploying 60 million for improving ecological environment in Rustavi. The project is highly complexed and aims at undertaking transport policy, greenery and other vital actions, the same manner as the Tbilisi air quality management plan” – Minister Levan Davitashvili stated at the Parliamentary hearing.