Protection of specially protected natural territories (SPNT)
- Topic: Protection of rights
- Date: 2020-03-23 12:37
Belarus has one nature reserve – a top-SPNT protection category – Byarezinski Biosphere Reserve, and 4 national parks («Belavezhskaya Pushcha», «Braslauskiya Azyory», «Narachanski», «Pripyatski»). These territories are under the authority of the Office of the President. The actual management is carried out by specially created State Environmental Institutions (SEI).
Current management practice of specially protected natural territories in Belarus has yet to become perfect and required serious changes.
The Review of national park’s management plans prepared by workgroup and provocatively entitled «Whether the Belarussian national parks can truly become national parks?».
There’re systemic issues in the management of protected areas: closed activity of SEI from publicity and keeping the local dwellers off the environmentally vital actions etc.
Economic activities of SEI are diverse: a game, logging and timbering, fishing, tourism, trade, agriculture etc.
Economic activities prevail the conservational functions and goals of SPNT. On the one hand, this situation violates the public’s rights for obtaining environmentally essential information and taking part in environmentally vital actions. On the other hand, there’s a threat to wildlife protection and biodiversity in five protected areas.
Target:
Conservation of biodiversity and wildlife in five protected areas and realization of the public’s rights to obtain environmentally essential information and take part in environmentally vital actions.
Participants:
NGO «Bahna»,
NGO «APB»,
«Green network» partnership.
Duration:
The campaign kicked off in 2014 and is ongoing.
Target audience:
local dwellers of the regions of five SPNT-es,
officials and stuff of every SPNT,
researchers of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus in the SPNT-field.
Tools:
awareness,
petitions,
panel discussions,
public discussions,
appeals and requests,
expeditions,
monitoring.
Decision-making parties:
the Office of the President,
five SPNT-es,
the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection.
