The recommendations emphasize the importance of raising awareness by intervening in educational programs and curricula to spread environmental concepts, as well as holding environmental seminars and training courses for judges, lawyers , administration, staff and experts.
In communication with other ministries, he emphasized the need to make the opinion of the Ministry of Environment valid and change the text regarding the licensing of industrial enterprises by removing the authority given to the Minister of Industry to grant a license, contrary to the competent opinions on file, especially the Ministry of the Environment. He recommended coordination between the Ministries of Environment and Justice to establish standards related to the selection of environmental experts sworn by the courts and change schedules, as well as the need to comply with court orders, especially those issued by the State Advisory Council regarding the impossibility of the Minister of the Interior to set a timetable and expedite the establishment of a regional department for the environment in Mount Lebanon Governorate, with the need for strict prosecution by the state in environment in the application of environmental law and send a circular through the Ministry of Justice to all registrars to deposit various decrees and decisions issued by the Ministry of Environment regarding environmental violations, as well as a circular to the Department of Tenders and Public Procurement and the Development and Reconstruction C ouncil that requests an environmental forensic report to the Ministry environmental protection for each bidder, as well as speeding up the consideration of environmental cases in court, because they are all in a hurry by nature.
He recalled the provisions of Law No. 44/2015 on treating environmental crimes as money-laundering crimes and taking precautionary measures in this regard, as well as giving environmental associations the right and limitation of prosecution through a draft law prepared by the Ministry of Environment. . In confirming the right of access to information and for the Ministry of Environment to publish all reports and studies on its website, including environmental impact studies for the public.
The need for other discussion sessions with the participation of executive authorities, governors, experts, relevant associations and the private sector was also emphasized, as well as the identification of laws, decrees and decisions that should be changed, in addition in decisions. required by the Minister of the Environment, to develop and implement the roadmap.
The recommendations emphasized the importance of classifying environmental crimes, especially those classified as “continuous crimes”, or long-term crimes that do not pass in time, so that lawsuits against pollution and mutilation , especially distant ones, can be brought at any time. reaching crimes such as polluting groundwater or uprooting mountains, destroying biodiversity and extinction of species in nature.
Environmental responsibility does not stop when investors are required to study the environmental impact of projects (before they are implemented). The most difficult for MNREP is the “strategic environmental assessment” of large projects for the state. or private sector, such as the classification of industrial areas, oil and gas exploration or the creation of large and polluting factories such as cement companies, or not defining a master plan to identify and regulate the investment and operations in quarrying, sandblasting and other resources.
Source: Al-Akhbar
