The Nizhny Novgorod Legislative Assembly approved in the first reading the exclusion of the norm on the abolition of protected areas

On April 25, 2024, the Legislative Assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod Region considered draft amendments to the law on specially protected natural areas (SPNA).

Let us recall that in July 2023, the Volga interregional environmental prosecutor lodged a protest against the articles of this law. He pointed out that the regional law contradicts federal regulations regarding the possibility of reorganization and abolition of protected areas. Despite the fact that the federal law does not directly prohibit such actions at the level of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, regions do not have the right to establish the possibility of reorganizing and abolishing protected areas.

In addition, the regional law does not have objective criteria for application and allows for the possibility of arbitrarily choosing a procedure for the reorganization and abolition of protected areas, which in turn is a corruption-prone factor.

ZSNO then satisfied the protest.

Now the Legislative Assembly Committee on Ecology has prepared changes to the law. Deputies propose to abolish Article 13, which provides for the abolition of protected areas of regional significance.

At the same time, parliamentarians believe that regions have the right to change the regime of special protection of protected areas of regional importance, and reorganization will certainly entail a change in the regime.

In this regard, Article 14 is proposed to be reworded, defining the grounds for changing the special protection regime. This article determines the content of documents and materials justifying the need for changes, including materials from a comprehensive environmental survey. The procedure for making a decision on changing the regime and the content of the environmental survey materials will have to be established by the regional government.

The draft law received a comment from the environmental prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor insists that the proposed new version of Part 14 does not comply with the requirements of federal law.

Therefore, the deputies adopted the bill only in the first reading and will finalize it for the second reading, taking into account the comments of the prosecutor’s office.

Photo: Nizhny Now news agency