Nane Makuchyan

"It is clear that for some reason the government doesn't want to have a real picture of the environment," says Tamara Hovhannisyan, deputy head of the now defunct Agency of Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring.

According to the March 17, 2004 Decision # 420-N by the Government of Armenia, the Agency of Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of the Ministry of Ecology was reorganized as the Division of Meteorology and Atmospheric Pollution Monitoring. This change provoked various comments, some of them outraged.

"In reality, this reorganization, at first glance presented within the context of structural reform, might indicate the involvement of quite serious corporate interests," say former managers at the agency. One of their arguments is the fact that in the more than ten years that it has existed, the Armenian Parliament has adopted only one law in this field, the Law on Hydrometeorology, and it did so in response to public demand, when there were no private interests involved.

It should come as no surprise that the head of the Standing Commission on Health, Ecology and Social Issues of the National Assembly, Gagik Mkheyan, was unaware of the recent government decision. But rather than reflecting on his lack of information, Mkheyan laid down conditions: "Unless you tell me how you found out about the decision, I will not talk to you; I place a high value on my every word."

The fact is the dissolution of the Agency of Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring is a direct consequence of parliamentary inaction. Gennady Kodjoyan and Tamara Hovhannisyan have worked in the field of ecology for nearly forty years, mostly at the managerial level. According to Kodjoyan, he was entrusted to manage the structure under circumstances in which there were no laws or regulations defining what exactly an "agency" was.

"It was impossible to head something when it was unclear whether it was a governing body, a policy designing body or a supervisory body, or none of the above. Managing implies having tools and resources, but we were given neither staff, nor financial, material nor professional leverage. In general, it is not clear in our country what an agency means. The legal framework is completely missing," Kodjoyan explains.

Then what one can expect from an agency in the field of, say, atmospheric pollution or natural resources management, when one out of three employees of the agency owns private minibus lines, manages a cement plant, or runs another air-polluting enterprise? The point is that the regulation of the legal framework in the field of environmental monitoring will bring with it huge penalties for polluting air, water, and soil. Environmental laws will have to be implemented, which will affect large and small oligarchs. This is something that Armenia is not ready for.

But Kodjoyan says, "It's a matter of time; sooner or later European institutions will oblige us to meet these requirements."

The government explains the recent restructuring as being aimed at "eliminating redundancy in the activity of various departments of the ministry, making the ministry's functioning more efficient, as well as ensuring sectoral division."

"In order to do this it is first of all necessary to create an efficient system of management," Kodjoyan insists, "It depends on what we want to do. If we want to fish in troubled waters, we can leave everything as it is. If we want everything to be clear and transparent to all of us, the tools exist, there is no need to reinvent the wheel."

To improve efficiency, Gennady Kodjoyan recommends separating the functions of the Ministry of Ecology and creating four independent departments - resource analysis (monitoring); resource management; strictly ecological issues, including the development of laws, normative acts, etc; and supervision, which will control the implementation of laws be entitled to impose penalties.

"Otherwise, if one department deals with all these issues, that is, it itself utilizes resources and as a result pollutes the environment, and it itself monitors the levels of pollution, then it is clear that there is a conflict of interest here," he says.

The fact is, the dissolution of the Agency of Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring is "change for change's sake" and does not signal a real attempt to raise the net efficiency of the reforms.

At present, the dissolution of the agency has deprived us of the ability to get complete information about, and to analyze and assess the results of, ecological monitoring. Moreover, it is not clear who is, in place of the agency, now implementing state policy on environmental monitoring, if such a policy exists at all.