Access to environmental information in Ukraine during the war

On December 18, a roundtable discussion was held on “Ensuring access to environmental information in Ukraine during the war”. It was organized by the NGO SaveDnipro.

Participants: Olena Kramarenko, First Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine; Bohdan Semenenko, Director of the Department of Industrial Pollution Prevention and Climate Policy of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources; Oleh Bondarenko, Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; Olena Shompol, Associate Professor of Environmental Law at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, co-author of the study; Pavlo Tkachenko, Head of IT at SaveDnipro, co-author of the study.

Moderator: Iryna Chernysh, head of SaveDnipro, co-author of the study.

The organizers of the event noted that environmental information has a special status – it cannot be classified. NGO SaveDnipro has investigated whether state institutions comply with the provisions of Article 50 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Aarhus Convention, CMU Resolution No. 835 and other legal acts that protect free access to information on the state of the environment.

During the roundtable, the authors of the study will share key findings on the current state of access to environmental information and will make recommendations for improving regulation and practical implementation of legal requirements.

In addition to the results of the study, the rating of open environmental data managers in accordance with the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 835 of 21.10.2015 will be discussed.

For reference. The report was made possible thanks to the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework of the joint program “European Renaissance of Ukraine: Civil Society Resilience and Recovery Initiative”.

The event was broadcast on Ukrinform’s website and YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/UkrinformTV.

Final materials:

Experts propose to lift the ban on access to environmental information during the war

The expert community considers it expedient to lift the ban on public access to environmental information during the war.

This was stated by participants of a roundtable discussion at Ukrinform on “Ensuring Access to Environmental Information in Ukraine during the War.”

According to Olena Shompol, Associate Professor of Environmental Law at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, access to environmental information regulates economic relations and ensures environmental safety and is a requirement of the European Union.

“Today, the rules on access to environmental information are pervasive in all legal regulation of economic relations and environmental safety. This is a systemic basic approach of the European Union. European legislation also enshrines the combination and simultaneous implementation of the principle of access to environmental information and the principle of publicity in the activities of both the EU and EU member state authorities. The standards and procedures for making any decisions in terms of taking into account environmental interests and human rights through ensuring access to environmental information are quite clearly regulated there,” said Schompol.

She also reminded that Article 50 of the Constitution of Ukraine enshrines the right of every citizen to a safe environment for life and health, guarantees access to environmental information, the right to disseminate it, and that such information cannot be classified by anyone.

In March 2023, the Verkhovna Rada even amended the relevant legislation, unifying the concept of environmental information for all entities, but decided that the law could come into force only 6 months after the lifting or termination of martial law.

According to Shompol, this restriction should be abolished as unjustified and holding Ukraine back on its way to the European Union.

“Due to the European Commission’s conclusions on Ukraine’s accession to the EU and fulfillment of its obligations under the Association Agreement, there is no point in waiting for the lifting of martial law, access to environmental information should be ensured today, and this has been repeatedly emphasized in the European Commission’s conclusions. We recommend revising the terms of entry into force of this law as soon as possible,” emphasized Schompol.

Meanwhile, Oleh Bondarenko, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management, explained why the entry into force of the relevant legislation was limited at one time and admitted that such a restriction no longer makes sense.

“When we adopted this law, we decided to postpone its entry into force until six months after the end of martial law because we hoped for a quick end to the war. I think we need to reconsider the timing of this law’s entry into force and fully or partially open access to environmental information. It is necessary to start creating and filling in the necessary registers, a full-fledged state multi-level environmental monitoring system and all the conditions for Ukrainian citizens to have timely access to information about the environment. And the creation of such a system should precede the end of the war, so that citizens can already receive information about how our country has changed during the war,” Bondarenko said.

Despite some progress in harmonizing national legislation with EU standards, access to environmental information for Ukrainian citizens during the war remains difficult.

This was stated by Iryna Chernysh, head of the SaveDnipro NGO, during the presentation of the results of the study “Access to Environmental Information in Ukraine during the War” at Ukrinform.

“Summarizing the European Commission’s conclusions on Ukraine for 2022-2024, we note that some progress has been made in Ukraine’s efforts to harmonize national environmental legislation. At the same time, the Commission notes problems with citizens’ access to environmental information at all stages of participation in Ukraine,” Chernysh said.

It is noted that the EU directives and other documents related to access to environmental information were analyzed, as well as Ukrainian legislation and actual access to such information since the beginning of the war.

During the monitoring, 209 sets of environmental data from 74 data collectors (according to Resolution No. 835) for the period of 2022-2024 were studied. It was found that only 38% of these sets are publicly available.

Thus, all data holders were grouped by type of authority into ministries, agencies, regional state administrations (RSAs) and city councils of regional centers. In particular, ministries turned out to be more closed – 33.8% of datasets are open, while RSAs publish 44.4% of datasets, agencies – 43.9%, and city councils of regional centers – only 25.9%.

According to the openness rating of the largest data administrators (more than 10 sets of environmental open data that are published properly), the State Agency for Energy and Natural Resources and the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection are the leaders (70% and 63.6% respectively), while the Ministry of Energy is the most closed with a score of 5.9%.

In addition to the European Commission’s conclusions, Iryna Chernysh emphasized that the broad concept of “environmental information” complicates its legal regulation. In addition, the lack of awareness of environmental information owners about their security, as well as low compliance, create additional obstacles.

In addition, problems with access to environmental information are related to the lack of technical capabilities for high-quality data processing and publication.

The study’s experts recommend unifying the terminology in the law of Ukraine on access to public information in accordance with the Aarhus Convention, as well as providing alternative ways to submit a request for access to information (in writing, orally, or in another form of the requestor’s choice).

It is also necessary to determine the entry into force of the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on the State System of Environmental Monitoring, Information on the State of the Environment (Environmental Information) and Information Support for Environmental Management” from January 1, 2025.

Bohdan Semenenko, Director of the Department of Industrial Pollution Prevention and Climate Policy at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, noted that before the full-scale invasion, most environmental data was open, but it did not meet EU standards.

According to him, for European integration, it is necessary to first improve the terminology and ensure high quality data, then they can be made available, taking into account the impact on the current situation in the country.

As reported, the organization of international lawyers Global Rights Compliance emphasized that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been striking at critical infrastructure, which complicates food supplies and destroys the environment.

Source: Укрінформ

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