The legislation plans to introduce the notion of forests and to ensure their protection

The Committee on Environmental Policy, nature management and liquidation of consequences of the Chornobyl disaster recommends the Parliament to adopt a draft law on amendments to some legislative acts of Ukraine on the protection of forests in accordance Framework Convention on the Protection and sustainable development of the Carpathians

This bill (finalized, № 4480), as stated in the explanatory note to it, is aimed at implementation of the Framework Convention on the Protection and sustainable development of the Carpathians and the Protocol on Sustainable Forests management to the Framework Convention on Security and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians, in the protection of forests.

The draft law proposes to make changes to the forest code of Ukraine, the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offences, the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the law of Ukraine “on natural-protected fund”.

Supporting the idea of implementing the mechanism of protection of Forests, the Committee on Environmental Policy, nature management and liquidation of consequences of the Chornobyl catastrophe expresses some remarks.

Since the notion of “forests” is new to the current legislation, it is important to form its definition by setting the list of criteria, features etc. Compliance with established normemaking should ensure the period of “forests” and the introduction of its clear definition in the legal field.

At the same time, the article 7 Protocol on Sustainable forest management definitions: “Forests – natural forests that have not suffered the direct impact of human activity in their development” is not. In particular, there are no signs and a list of criteria that can be clearly identified by the forests. The Committee does not consider it expedient to enter into the legal field of Ukrainian legislation is not quite successful translation of definition of this term. In determining the forests there should be present signs of size, quantity, tasks for their preservation, etc. Such rules of the Convention are the norms of general influence which must be implemented, taking into account the current national legislation. In accordance with the rules of draft laws and basic requirements of legislative equipment, definitions of terms should conform to their content, which is contained in official business language, special sciences and current legislation.

Therefore, for the effectiveness of implementation of this norm it is necessary to determine the criteria for which the forests can be identified. In particular, these criteria are suggested to include the following: the minimum area of the forest, species composition, type of renewal, the structure of the forest, where the range of age groups of trees is confirmed by biometric characteristics, and other. In this case, the criterion of presence or absence of “anthropogenic interference”, except for visible signs of intervention, must be confirmed by the documents (forestry, Planning and management, archives, etc.). Without any superfluous detail, the proposed criteria can become those signs, which will be possible to provide a definition of the self and provide the appropriate protection.

The draft law requires some technical and legal revision. In particular, according to the generally accepted rules of legislative engineering in the project to make changes, the codes are placed first, and then to the laws in chronological order.

The main scientific and expert management expresses a number of remarks and on the results of consideration in the first reading it considers that the project can be adopted as a basis with the subsequent consideration.

The Committee on Prevention and counteraction of corruption, says that the project does not detect corruptionous factors – The draft complies with the requirements of anti-corruption legislation.

The Budget Committee made a decision that the specified draft law has an impact on budget indicators (decreases revenues of state and local budgets, and may increase the revenues and expenditures of the State budget in case of identifying violations, depending on the Penalties to be applied). Also, requires the refinement of the date of introduction, depending on the adoption.