Forest protection from fires: the Verkhovna Rada's environmental committee considered the report of the Accounting Chamber

Amendments to legislation on environmental control, strengthening control over illegal logging and improving technical preparedness for fighting fires. Such measures were taken by the authorities in Ukraine in response to the recommendations of the Accounting Chamber, provided following the results of an international parallel audit of forest fire protection, said during a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management, Deputy Chairman of the Accounting Chamber responsible for the audit, Serhiy Klyuchka.

The Report was reviewed online on April 28.

As a reminder, this audit was initiated by the Secretariat of the EUROSAI Working Group on Auditing Funds Allocated for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, chaired by the Chamber of Accounts.

The auditors assessed the state of forest management and the effectiveness of measures aimed at preventing, preparing for emergencies and combating forest fires in three countries: Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine.

The Chamber of Accounts, the State Audit Office of Georgia and the National Audit Office of Lithuania prepared a joint report based on the results of national audits. The auditors of the three countries identified similar problems in all participating countries. In particular, the implementation of national forest conservation strategies is complicated by insufficient coordination between institutions and the lack of data on the state of fire protection systems integrated into the general structure of monitoring the occurrence of forest fires and combating them. And since the actions of various fire prevention agencies are not coordinated, resources for such purposes are used inefficiently. Also a key problem is  outdated equipment of fire departments.

In general, despite progress in some countries, most problems remain unresolved due to the lack of a holistic strategy and proper coordination - notes  Serhiy Klyuchka.

Based on the audit findings, general recommendations were proposed for consideration by national governments and public authorities, in addition to those resulting from the national audit.

To implement these recommendations in general:

- the Parliament adopted as a whole the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses and the Criminal Code of Ukraine on Improving Liability for Offenses in the Field of Plant Protection, Forest Use and Counteracting Illegal Timber Trafficking”;

- the draft Law of Ukraine “On State Environmental Control” was adopted in the first reading, which defines the principles of the reform of state environmental control;

- the State Forest Agency developed amendments to the Procedure for Maintaining the State Forest Cadastre and initiated proposals to the Forest Code to harmonize them with the legislation on public electronic registers;

- enterprises under the management of the State Forest Agency, together with the National Police of Ukraine, have now created mobile raid groups to combat illegal logging and fires, and quarterly mutual verifications of materials on illegal logging have been established;

- State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" technical readiness to combat forest fires was strengthened: fire modules, machinery, equipment were purchased, television surveillance systems were installed;

- the readiness of 564 facilities for the fire-hazardous period was checked and confirmed, the technical park was updated, fuel reserves were created in forestry;

- work is underway to introduce the latest fire detection technologies, in particular through satellite monitoring in cooperation with the State Space Agency of Ukraine.

Serhiy Klyuchka  also noted that the draft decision of the Committee based on the results of consideration of the Report takes into account the issues raised by the Accounting Chamber and thanked the people's deputies for their assistance in implementing the recommendations.

People's Deputy, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on Environmental Policy and Environmental Management Oleg Bondarenko  also noted that two more bills have been registered in the parliament to implement the recommendations of the Accounting Chamber: on strengthening responsibility for setting fire to dry vegetation and appealed to the people's deputies with a request to support the consideration of this issue. 

Following the results of the review, the Committee took note of the Report and recommended that the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine take measures to implement forest monitoring, maintain the State Forest Cadastre, conduct forest accounting and conduct a national forest inventory, and that the control objects continue to implement the recommendations provided in the Report on protecting forests from fires.