4. Legal Substantiation of the Public Support to and Participation in Preserving Biodiversity in the Dnipro Basin

4. LEGAL SUBSTANTIATION OF THE PUBLIC SUPPORT TO AND PARTICIPATION IN PRESERVING BIODIVERSITY IN THE DNIPRO BASIN

4.1. One of the forms of public participation in conserving biodiversity can be public environmental control. According to the Law of the Republic of Belarus “On Environmental Protection” of 17 June 2002, the work of state power bodies and officials can also be subjected to public monitoring and control. The laws of the Republic of Belarus stipulate that “the procedures of public monitoring and control shall be regulated by the legislation of the Republic of Belarus and charters of non-governmental organizations”. This provision is extremely important as it opens up opportunities for introducing new forms of public control by envisaging them in NGO charters. Thus, according to the Law “On Legal Status of Territories Subjected to Radioactive Contamination Resulting from the Chernobyl NPP Accident”, non-governmental organizations active in assisting the people who suffered in the Chernobyl accident, upon being accredited in an established order, can conduct radiation monitoring and control of products and environment (Articles 41-42).

4.2. Public has an important role to play in controlling the environmental decision-making in the Dnipro Basin within the frameworks of public environmental examination. The citizens are interested in and entitled to participating in the environmental impact assessment procedures and evaluating their results. In the international practice, a legal form of public involvement in the environmental impact assessment procedures is that of public hearings. However, the Regulations on Environmental Impact Assessment of the Russian Federation, approved by the Order of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation of 18 July 1994, and the Instruction on Procedures of Assessing Environmental Impact of Planned Economic and Other Activities in the Republic of Belarus, approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus of 6 February 2001, give the consumer a choice of either public hearing or project discussion in the mass media. The latter offers the interested public fewer opportunities for expressing their attitude to discussed projects. It seems more appropriate for the basin countries’ legislation to give preference to public hearings as a form of public participation.

4.3. The citizens’ environmental rights and responsibilities in the sphere of conserving biodiversity in the Dnipro Basin cannot be fully exercised unless they have access to environmental information and take part in environmental decision-making, in particular with regard to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in the Dnipro Basin. The constitutional legislation regulates the right to receiving, storing and disseminating complete, accurate and timely information on environmental situation (Article 34 of the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus) and the right to reliable information on environmental situation (Article 42 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation). An instrument of international law regulating legal aspects of ensuring access to environmentally relevant information is the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This Convention was ratified by Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus. Its ratification by the Russian Federation would foster a more active public involvement in the process of making environmentally relevant decisions for the Dnipro Basin.

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