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Minister Davitashvili: “Monitoring of atmospheric air quality remains as one of the core priorities for our Ministry”
Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia, Mr Levan Davitashvili delivered a presentation on the long-term vision of the Ministry under the following theme – “Environmental Protection and Rural Development 2030”; throughout the presentation, Minister Davitashvili elaborated on details regarding development vision: “we have harvested significant success in improving atmospheric air during the recent years; nevertheless, despite of the respective area being under our core priorities – still, some of the challenges remain. Atmospheric air management and vision requires deployment of a comprehensive policy. We have embarked on shaping ambitious plans and have adopted a new legislation, which ensures prevention of atmospheric air pollution. 150 large enterprises have been obliged to ensure consistent monitoring, as an effort to protect atmospheric air; such constant monitoring will ensure that large, industrial cities have a cleaner air”.Within the new legislation, every large agro-amelioration will deploy atmospheric air quality management plans, which have already been introduced in Tbilisi and Rustavi. At 10 large agro-ameliorations of Georgia – detailed plans for air quality management will be elaborated, which will entail numerous programming and among these - decreasing emissions. Moreover, a special emphasis will be made on arranging green spaces, fostering ecological transport, tightening requirements on fuel and ensuring more recreational and green spaces” – Minister Davitashvili stated.
Throughout the recent years, Tbilisi, Rustavi and Batumi have introduced new standards for atmospheric air monitoring, which ensures constant oversight through automatic stations; moreover, 25 cities undergo monitoring of air quality indicators, four times a year.
The National Environmental Agency has joined forces with the United Nations Development Programme and the Swedish Government to undertake the project, which has resulted into development of air quality monitoring network development (roadmap), which has set forth future steps for enhancing the respective area nationwide; the respective roadmap also entails information on identifying number of new stations and their locations.
The Government will develop and implement more than 10 comprehensive plans for atmospheric air improvement in those cities, which encounter challenges with air pollution. The efforts will result into the following actions:
· Creation of more recreational and green spaces;
· Enhancement of cleaner public transport;
· Improvement of fuel quality and tightening standards for decreasing emissions from transport;
· Full recovery and rehabilitation of the Krtsanisi Forest-Park;
· Arrangement of the South Caucasian Ecosystems and Recovery Center, as well as public space for environmental education;
As an effort to decrease pollution from an industrial sector, the following actions will be undertaken:
· Deployment of the new requirements for enhancing air quality standards at an industrial sector, as adopted by the Parliament;
· Ensuring comprehensive oversight for polluter enterprises, at least once a year;
· By 2030, around 200 largest enterprises will deploy the best European technologies for eradicating pollution of air, water and soil.