Final Project Conference
Final conference of the Twinning project was organised at the American University of Armenia yesterday, March 15, 2023. The project has focused on enhancement of the Armenian legislation in biodiversity and nature conservation, as well as on increasing effectivness of the government institutions responsible for nature conservation.
Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic and the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE has worked together with the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Armenia to prepare proposals for legislative changes that will enhance nature conservation in Armenia. Establishing new category of protected areas – Protected Landscape, and setting up rules for Valuable Natural Ecosystems as a category allowing protecting biodiversity on private lands are examples of many proposals and recommendations. Team of international experts also suggested changes in institutional set up in the field of nature conservation eventually leading to establishment of a government agency responsible for biodiversity conservation and management of protected areas.
Minister of Environment of Republic of Armenia Mr. Hakob Simidyan expressed his support to the project results and added: "I believe results of this project in legislation and institutional development become key instruments for implementation of the agreement between Armenia and the European Union."
Since Armenia signed the CEPA (Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement) with the European Union, the country is going to implement several steps towards legal and practical cooperation with the European Union. Approximation of the EU nature directives is the goal in the field of nature conservation. “We summarised the CEPA requirements and explained the main principles of the habitats and birds directives in the Natura 2000 Toolkit including couple of case studies on biodiversity conservation success stories. This is to provide condensed information explaining the EU legislation for Armenian conservationists,” Mr. Tomas Ruzicka from the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic explained.
Draft of the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy for Armenia has been developed by the team of international and Armenian experts. “We have also drafted the action plan implementing the Strategy and we are discusing it these days with the Ministry,“ Mr. David Lacina, project leader from the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic, stated. The Strategy and the Action plan already takes into consideration the targets set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Presentations from the conference can be downloaded from Downloads and the conference record can be seen here.
Final brochure of the project.
Photos by Ministry of Environment