In the field of access to information:
The publicly stated attitude of certain environmental officials that "All needed information can be obtained from the libraries" will definitely need to be changed to achieve improvement in the field of access to environmental information in Belarus.
Belarus would benefit from a specific law on information or environmental information, similar to the Information Law in Russia, which would define environmental information. This definition would not only include information on the state of the environment but also on planned and existing activities that harm or are likely to harm the environment.
The law would also acknowledge its special role in facilitating the constitutional right to healthy environment and clearly specify the rules of dealing with it. Such law, or consequent regulations could also define the public domain of information, or publicly accessible environmental registries, where information on planned environmentally harmful activities would be compiled.
The question of forms in which information is provided and the distinction between "information" and "document" should be addressed by the legislation. It is imperative that access to certain public domain documents be secured.
Belarus can be praised for having an explicit public interest test in classifying environmental information in its legislation. However, guidelines on using this test and its application in practice would be welcome.
To save government resources needed for active provision of environmental information, the operation of nongovernmental environmental information centers should be encouraged.
The Information Department of the Ministry of the Environment should be restored. It would be beneficial to see the creation of an independent National Environmental Infor-mation Agency similar in its functions to RFEIA in Russia.
The forms of active dissemination of environmental information should be diversified and the Internet more actively used.
In the field of public participation in environmental decisionmaking:
At the level of strategic decisionmaking, the government should take a more proactive approach of involving environmental NGOs in discussions and consulting them on major policy choices. A Public Environmental Council formed by NGOs with the participation of the Ministry of Environment may be a suitable tool for this.
The Belarus legislation on State Ecological Review (SER)/State Environmental Expertise (SEE) and EIA (OVOSAUNA) is clear and concise. The legislation could benefit from a legal definition of the purpose of SEER procedure that would include public participation in decisionmaking on planned activities (currently SEE is also possible for existing activities) as one of its objectives.
One of the most significant drawbacks of the current system is the lack of provisions for the public access to information about SEEs that are being conducted. The State Environmental Review Ecological Expertise Departments, local authorities and developers should be made responsible for informing the public about planned activities, otherwise all other public participation provisions will be no more than a declaration. The public should have access to the following information:
The prerequisite for productive participation in SER and other environmental decisionmaking processes, including those at the strategic level, is adequate notification about the start of an SER procedure. Such a requirement, currently lacking from the Belarusian legislation, should be introduced as soon as possible.
Belarus can be praised for retaining a provision to include representatives of the public in SER expert committees. Such a stipulation was recently excluded from the Russian legislation. Unfortunately, in Belarus the decision to include a public representative in a SER committee is left entirely to the discretion of SER department's officials. It would be useful to make this provision mandatory and to encourage its implementation in practice.
SER or regulations should be broadened in scope — at least as far as public participation requirements are concerned — to cover policies, plans, programs and other strategic decisions, as well as projects.
The mechanism of Public Environmental Review Ecological Expertise (PEER) is one of the most powerful tools of public participation in environmental decisionmaking in post-communist countries (Khotuleva et al, 1996). Though PEER is mentioned in all the Belarusian SER regulations, its role remains marginal. This can be demonstrated by the fact that the Belarus law is called "On State Environmental Review Ecological Expertise" while its equivalent in Russia and Kazakhstan are called "On Environmental Ecological [meaning both state and public] Review Expertise."
The following measures should be taken to improve the efficiency of PEE in Belarus:
In the field of access to justice:
Official corruption is one of the obstacles to accessing to justice in Belarus. The other obstacles include a lack of resources (i.e. financial, human, technical and professional), difficulties in proving causal relation in cases of environmental damage and difficulties in placing responsibilities for the damage that occurred.
In this area the main recommendation would be to encourage the citizens to understand their rights and to encourage them by all possible means to protect them.
Finally, all efforts to strengthen public participation in Belarus, by legal, regulatory and other means can only be successful if they are developed and implemented in an open and participatory manner with the active involvement of the NGO community and other affected sectors of the society.