Jaraslau Bekish: Belarus violates basic principles of international ecological programs

Belarusan state asks the UN for help, though doesn’t observe its basic obligations before this organization.

Belarusan authorities ask technical and financial support under the framework convention of the Kyoto Protocol without fulfilling conditions of the convention: access to information, cooperation of the civil society, business and state, listening to public opinion. EuroBelarus Information Service received the comments of Jaraslau Bekish, the leader of the ecological association “Green network”.

At the latest session of the UN General Assembly on the development of cooperation in the sphere of eco-friendly technologies Jury Jarashevich, the representative of the Belarusan Foreign Ministry, was talking about the necessity to render scientific and technological assistance to the countries with an average level of income, including Belarus. During the conference the issue of support under the framework convention of the UN on Climate Chang and Kyoto Protocol was discussed.

According to the assessment given by Jaraslau Bekish, “the problem is that all international conventions and agreements presuppose not only financial support, but have some procedure specifications, too”.

“One of the most important is the transparency of the processes provided by the conventions’ intrinsic mechanisms. The conventions themselves presuppose that the authorities of the countries which signed them take upon themselves responsibilities to actively inform citizens about the situation, as well as include all the interested in these processes irrespectively of the income or development level.

In Belarus we witness strong tendency of non-informing citizens about the actions taken, as well as refusing to provide information on demand, by this violating both Belarusan and international legislation.

A month ago “Green Network” appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Nature, asking to provide information on agreement in Russia’s, Belarus’, Ukraine and Kazakhstan’s attitudes towards the current negotiation session on climate. They have to give us this information; however, they only gave usthe runaround from both ministries. It is one more testimony to how closed these processes are from the publicity and how inconsistent Belarusan authorities are in fulfilling their international obligations.

Though Belarus asks UN for aid, it violates the basic principles of this organization. The money allocated for scientific and industrial developments should be absolutely transparent; there is practically no information about them except the formal information about their existence. At the same time the information as to what projects are supposed to be implemented, what part play all the interested sides in their development and adoption, monitoring and evaluation remains to be unknown. On the whole, I would say that the officials try to hide this information as much as possible.

There is no doubt that we support international technical aid, the transfer of leading technologies, participation of Belarus in negotiation processes on these Conventions and programs, as well as we welcome the inclusion of Belarus in the processes of conceptual development and technical implementation of what is referred to as “green economy”. But we categorically object to the illiterate, unqualified approach and serious violations that accompany these processes”.

“For the near future the main goal for the Belarusan ecological community consists in establishing mechanisms of participation, monitoring and control of such programs’ implementation”, - Jaraslau Bekish believes.