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14 April 2008
| REGION: the EBRD’s public consultations on the social and environmental policy and public information policy were held in Bishkek. |
35 public environmental organizations from the Central Asian states and Mongolia took part in the public consultations of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on the social-environmental policy and public information policy.
Mr. Mark King, the EBRD Team Leader on environment and sustainable development issues stated out at the press-conference that the bank revised its policies in 2003.
Since that time, the ecological and social situation in the world has being changed crucially, and problems such as the biodiversity loss and climate change became a priority. .
By Mr. Mark King, new approaches to achieve the economic sustainability should include also goals to overcome urgent environmental challenges. Mostly, these aspects were considered under revision of the EBRD policies.
Framed changes are aimed to increase transparency and accountability of the bank to the public and ensure environmental security of the projects funded by the bank.
At the same time, new documents regulating the social-environmental policy and public information policy caused an interest among the representatives of environmental community of the region. They were widely discussed in the countries prior the meeting in Bishkek and some ecological NGOs were able to formulate their consolidated position on specific issues beforehand.
At the meeting, concrete proposals on policy update were made already, including:
• extend of deadline to announce information about new projects funded by the EBRD and impose it as a duty on the bank clients;
• deadline to disclose results of assessment of the nature protection and social consequences of the project implementation;
• increase ways and methods of the bank information dissemination: besides the bank website, it is necessary to disseminate the project documents through the local mass media and hardcopies;
• timely translation of the project documents in languages of the countries where these projects are implemented;
• Exclude the agreements related to the technical assistance projects from the paragraph “On confidential information” and etc.
The EBRD officers listened carefully and recorded all comments and reacted to some of them immediately.
Also, Mr. Mark King responding to question on mechanism of consideration of received proposals highlighted that “…it does not mean that we accept all comments since requests of different parties participating in a process of the public consultations are often in contradiction to each other and inconsistent”.
Then, he noticed progressive nature of the public consultations and stated out his intention to hold such meetings with the public on annual base, and not only during the policy revision.
More detailed information on the public consultations related to the EBRD new policies is presented in further news on the website.
Source: CARNet press-service
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