As the Deputy Minister of Environment Protection and Agriculture, Nino Tandilashvili, said at the event, “these trainings will help us understand in depth from the European experts how the directive on environmental responsibility works in the EU countries and to be able to bring the enforcement system as close as possible to the European one.”
The training entitled "Determining and Assessing the Measures to Restore Significant Damage Inflicted on the Environment and Preparation of a Restoration Plan" is being carried out within the framework of the EU4Environment project, with the support of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The employees of the National Environment Agency and Environmental Supervision Department of the Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture, who will be directly involved in the law enforcement process, are attending the training.
As part of the training course, the participants will learn about the system of environmental responsibility, environmental restoration technologies and various strategies for overcoming the environmental problems in relation to degraded urban, agricultural and industrial landscapes. Besides the theoretical training, the practical examples will be discussed and the field training will be conducted.
In 2021, Georgia adopted the Law on Environmental Liability, in accordance with the provisions of the Association Agreement with the European Union. The law aims to introduce a system of environmental liability close to the European standards, based on the "polluter pays" principle and aimed at preventing, eliminating/mitigating and restoring the environmental damage.
Based on the law, an environmental damage program has been created, the purpose of which is to prevent damage, restore the state of the environment, as well as improve the state of the historically damaged environment and research the environment. The Agencies responsible for the enforcement of the mentioned law are the Environmental Supervision Department (ESD) of the Ministry of Environment Protection and Agriculture (MEPA) and LEPL National Environmental Agency.