Georgia: Environmental Reform Seeks “Golden Balance” between Commerce and Conservation

Georgia’s photogenic mountains, woodlands and coastlines are often featured in tourism ad campaigns, but environmentalists say a radical restructuring of the government’s leading environmental agency indicates that officials in Tbilisi are ready to trash the environment. Officials strenuously deny such allegations.

Parliament on March 11 adopted a package of amendments to over 40 laws that had the effect of dramatically downsizing the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. Under the changes, five ministries, ranging from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, will assume responsibility for parts of the Environment Ministry’s erstwhile portfolio. The Ministry of Energy, the former domain of Prime Minister Nika Gilauri, will take over most of the portfolio, and the Environment Ministry’s inspectorate will eventually be scrapped.

Officials say the reforms are designed to reduce alleged corruption in the Environment Ministry, particularly in its Forestry Department. President Mikheil Saakashvili called for the ministry’s reorganization in December 2010, following the arrests of the Forestry Department head and several colleagues.

Traditionally a weak ministry, the Environment Ministry retains just a handful of its former responsibilities, including oversight of protected lands, air quality control and waste management. Its budget -- already one of the government’s smallest -- will be reduced from 27.2 million lari ($16 million) to just 15 million lari ($8.82 million).

Some environmentalists, meanwhile, allege the chief motivation for the legislative changes is not a desire to clean up government, but to weaken the environmental regulatory framework and the ministry’s enforcement capabilities, which could potentially hinder the government’s aggressive efforts to attract investment. The division of responsibilities among various ministries, they note, could easily complicate attempts to coordinate environmental protection measures, as well as track compliance.

That concern particularly centers around one of Georgia’s prime natural resources – its estimated 3 million hectares of forests. Over the past several years, the government has secured multi-million dollar contracts with Christmas tree producers, but could not provide a figure for total licensing revenue. Under the reform, a special agency for natural resources will be created within the investment-minded Ministry of Energy. That agency will oversee forest licensing as well as oil, gas and underground water supplies.

To Nana Janashia, executive director of the Tbilisi-based Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN), the transfer of authority suggests that Georgia’s forests could be fast-tracked for privatization, given that the Energy Ministry already oversees privatization of hydropower resources.

“I think it will be much easier for them to privatize now – much more efficient because now it will be under the Ministry of Energy” rather than handled by two different ministries, as previously, she claimed. “Now we will probably have massive privatization and auctions of the natural resources management.”

Zaal Gamtsemlidze, first deputy chair of the parliamentary Committee on Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, insisted that the forests will be protected from overly aggressive privatization.

“I think [environmental protection] is very important … for our country,” said Gamtsemlidze, who described the reforms as intended to make the Environment Ministry “a priority.” “Compared to European countries … we are lucky that we still have territory with virgin forests and resources. … But now it is important to create good, detailed management,” he added.

He also said that economic interests must have a place in Georgian environmental policy. “When the country is in [an economic] situation like we are, we have to find a golden balance so the natural wealth we have remains … and, in addition, we have to use it in some aspect for economic gain,” said Gamtsemlidze, who briefly served as environment minister in 2008.

For the CENN’s Janashia, that principle is the problem. “They see, in the management of natural resources, only the fiscal effect. They don’t see the sustainability effect,” she asserted, referring to government policymakers. The reform package was initiated by Prime Minister Gilauri’s office and presented to parliament by the Energy Ministry.

Gamtsemlidze disputed Janashia’s depiction of developments, stressing that moving forestry management to the Energy Ministry was not “a tragedy.” The government, he asserted, is up to the task of monitoring how multiple ministries fulfill their environmental tasks.

But a lack of clarity still leaves environmental activists unsettled. Manana Kochladze, founder of Green Alternative, an environmental group, expressed doubts about how the oversight of environmental protection measures will occur. “In lots of cases it is not clear who is taking these functions, how these functions will be actually implemented,” said Kochladze. “[T]he problem is that if this Ministry will not have these functions, where will these functions go?”

The division of responsibility for coastal area protection illustrates the potential for confusion. While the Environment Ministry will still make policy for Georgia’s coastal areas, implementation of the policy will fall to the Ministry of Regional Development. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice will handle how to define forms of land use.

A tentative agreement exists to recreate an environmental inspectorate, although nothing definitive has yet been determined, Gamtsemlidze said. He insisted the government is “on the right path” toward developing an effective Environmental Ministry. “[The result] depends on our intellect, our correct strategy,” he commented. “If people will think wisely, everything will be fine.”

Environmentalists stress that that outcome could depend on the definition of “wisely.” With responsibilities distributed so widely among government agencies, “it will be much more difficult now to protect the environment,” Janashia said.