 Good morning. I hope you can hear me well. I suggest it's nine o'clock and one minute and I see that the number of participants is increasing. Perhaps we could wait for another minute and then start. Once again, good morning. I suggest we should start with today's webinar and anyone who joins us later on will be able to engage with us without problem. Let me use this opportunity to welcome you to the fifth webinar entitled Benefits of the Public Participation in the Creation of Environmental Policies, including experience from Estonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This webinar takes place within the activities on the development of the environmental strategy and action plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina, ESAB 2030+, which is implemented with the Stockholm Environment Institute with the local partner INOVA and INE21. The project is funded by the Kingdom of Sweden. Within the activities on the development of ESAB 2030+, we formed seven working groups which are using participatory approach to create the content of the strategy. My name is Maya Matatec-Tiro and I'm the lead expert together with the lead experts, manage the work of the environmental management group. Both of us will be moderating today's webinar and the purpose is to provide an opportunity to learn more about the engagement of public in environmental management. We have guests from Estonia, Ms. Kaida Peterson and Mr. Koupohina, and Ms. Vedovic and Mr. Bielic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The guest presenters will address the issue of the importance and explain why is it so important, the participation of the public so important. For introduction, my colleague, Nizhna Mihilovic, will provide a brief overview of the activities of the working group for the environmental management and she will address the key challenges identified by the members of the working groups. Some of them pertain to the participation of the public in the decision-making process on environmental issues. Let me note that this event is organized on the Zoom platform in form of a webinar which means that all the participants can ask questions to the guest presenters through the box Q&A which you can see on the bottom of your screen. There will be no possibility for the participants to ask questions directly orally. All questions should be asked through this Q&A functionality. My colleague and myself will read all these questions and within the Q&A sessions the guest presenters will provide answers to your questions. This was just a brief introduction and now I hand over to Nizhna to provide us with an insight into our topic. Thank you very much, Maya. Thank you all for taking the interest in this webinar and the topic participation of the public. As Maya said, I will use several slides and try to present the results and the developments of the work in our working groups and link this, linkages with today's seminar. It should be noted at the beginning that the process of development of strategy and action plans of Bosnia and Herzegovina is developing within working groups. My colleague, Maya and myself lead and moderate the activities of the working group on environmental management. It is particularly important to note that we use participatory approach and all the sectors are involved in the activities, private sector, non-governmental, governmental sector and academia. We formed working groups for all four levels of the government. We have a working group for Bosnia and Herzegovina and special working groups for both entities and the Bačko district. So far, we have held two meetings of these working groups at all levels. The process started to accelerate in autumn last year. This year, we will have most activities on the development of all the documents. We want the documents to reflect the actual situation and the key challenges that the participants identified regarding the key challenges. It should be noted primarily that they are related to the scope of the work of the working groups in the thematic area, environmental management and some key processes, the process of environmental assessment and strategic environmental assessment, impact assessment then the strategies and the processes related to licensing and issues of permits, then we should also note the processes of issues of integrated licenses and processes related to spatial planning. We should also note the importance of the horizontal coordination and that is coordination among all the bodies responsible for the environment. And the area which we also cover is the access to the public and the participation of the public, which is most relevant for today's webinar. We address key issues that are linked with the area of rights and democracy. As we will hear later on in the presentations, this is covered by the Arcus Convention and the relevant directives of the EU. Key challenges within the main strategic goal which is common for all the strategic documents and that's in improved environmental management. They are divided among the four levels of the governments. The majority of the challenges pertain to the institutional framework. The state level is responsible for coordination of the institutions that we have and we also identified some challenges regarding the application and implementation of international agreements and conventions and monitoring. Some of these challenges are also present at the level of the entities as for the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As you can see, there are much more challenges which are related to the legal framework, including the lack of certain bodies for legislative bodies which could adopt the legislation and enforce the legislation. We also have problems in the institutional framework, coordination of institutions among them and it is particularly important to notice also that we identified the monitoring challenges related to monitoring participation of the public and access to information, public access to information and participation of the public which we will discuss today regarding Republika Srpska. The situation is comparable. Most challenges are linked with the legal framework, the other quasi and lack of regulations, inefficient implementation of international agreements. Then we also have challenges related to the institutional frameworks which are also related to the public access to information and for the district. We again pursuant to the responsibilities of the district and we also have some challenges related to the institutional framework. What is important for today's webinar are the challenges related to the participation of the public. There are several types of challenges in this regard. We established that we have set up a legal framework for free access to information and participation of the public but we still observe difficulties regarding the implementation and enforcement of these provisions. Not all the institutions have been transparent in their book and there are also certain problems in the civil sector too over the recent period. We have seen some both formal and informal non-governmental organizations which can provide a quality contribution to the decision-making processes but still the problem remains with the response of the public to public hearings. We have problems among different stakeholders but it is important to understand that in the development process of ESAB 2030 we opened the possibility for all the stakeholders and actors to provide their contribution. Whatever I showed you in the previous slides regarding the challenges, these challenges were identified with the participation of all the stakeholders including representatives of civil society, private sector, academia, governmental bodies. We believe that this is a normal part of the participatory approach and all the stakeholders and actors should be encouraged to come forward with their proposal if there are some conflicting issues we will discuss them and seek to achieve a compromise. I invite and encourage all of you who are not involved in the work of the working groups for to apply and to send a message to one of the emails which you can see on the screen. We will share them later on in our chat box. This is the general info ESAB email and the emails on myself and Maya. You can write to us and I hope you will engage more actively in our working groups. That would be all from my side. Of course I will together with Maya moderate this webinar until the end. Thank you. Thank you for this introductory presentation. Once again, if I may remind the participants any questions you may have for our presenters, panelists, you can send to the Q&A functionality which is on the bottom of the screen next to the chat box. Now may I announce the first presenter, Ms. Maya Peterson will provide us with an insight into benefits and challenges of the public participation and she will try to explain why the participation of the public is so important. Ms. Maya Peterson works at the TALIN since 1993. She is a senior researcher and head of the research since 2000. She is the director of the sustainable development program. Her fields of interest and research include environmental policy, specifically environmental assessment issues such as the methods of impact assessment, environmental management, the process of public involvement and the consideration of results of public involvement in the decision-making process. She has published several books, guidelines and papers on these issues and she's also a respected lecturer on these topics. May I invite Ms. Maya Peterson to provide her presentation. Yeah, thank you and good morning to everyone. So I hope my slides will be presented. Yes, thank you Senka. So yeah, thank you for the invitation to present the theory and also to provide you with some of the examples from my own experience on public participation because when we look back into the history of public participation then we find that actually it was put on the screen or on the table by the environmental impact assessment. And this was the moment where the decision makers realised that it's not only enough to take into consideration the technical aspects, what the experts of different technical areas provided but it appears that since the environment is a common good then all the people, the communities, the society at large should have a say how they envisage the use of the land, the use of the natural resources and more broadly the natural values. And this was the reason why the certain rules were set already in the 1970s, 1980s and particularly when the environmental assessment procedures were developed. So in my presentation I would shortly touch upon why the public participation is important and also the theory of the public participation because it's sometimes good to know about what are the key issues, what the different authors and schools of public participation have regarded important and how to build up a good but participation process. And that's why there are prerequisites for public participation. There are certainly benefits because otherwise the public participation wouldn't get such an attention as it has but of course there are challenges and not all the public participation modes or activities or the ranks of the letter of PNP are equally useful, equally applied and even what is the aim of the public participation if it does vary quite a lot. So let's start with why the public participation is important. As I said the environment is not owned by anybody personally but it's a public good. So all the people of the community of the society or globally at large should take responsibility for a good environment and the sustainable management of the environment. Environment in a very broad sense not only certain resources but all the environment, the outer environment at large because environment doesn't have a voice so the people should be the spokesman of the environment. And as I referred the EIA process was actually the initiative of developing the rules of public participation because it was realized that it's not only that we postulate public participation but it should be also given the rules, the ways how to do it and how to communicate it, how to consider the different inputs and contributions from different stakeholder groups to the decision makers and how to motivate the decision at the eventually. And this was also the birthplace of Warhol's convention in 1998 because it was realized that several countries that some unified universal rules are needed and how what are the good practices of public participation in decision making but not only in decision making but also access to that information and then access to justice. And last but not the least it's also about the democracy because hearing the different stakeholders, hearing the public and considering their concerns, their proposals, this is a quite a natural way of doing decision making in a democratic society. So it's about democracy. The next one. As to the theory you may be surprised that the theory of public participation goes actually quite a long way to the history and already in 1969 an American researcher Sherry Einstein provided this pyramid of public participation that is on the right hand side of the slide. And as you can see there are different terms how to describe the different extent of public participation in decision making. And what are most used by the decision makers and starting with the manipulation where somebody is just as a rubber stamp to decisions up to the citizen control where the citizens or citizen organizations are rarely given quite a big deal of organizing and management of different public goods and all the way between those two extremes. Maybe just some of the terms that might not be familiar to us daily. But as the researcher Einstein has provided there are from starting from those manipulation or no participation to the full participation at the top. But also there are some ambiguous quite gray areas of participation. But what what the other researchers have adapted to this pyramid is that there are certainly quite commonly used activities like informing or information is very important. The consultations are very important. But as I said they have different degrees of public involvement. And this tokenism which is which is really can also step in in several cases where the stakeholders are involved symbolically. They are not expected for true contributions. But this is more a symbolic effect or effort that is expected. And on the left hand side maybe this is more a familiar step or staircase also from informing to to to already consultations. And this is regarded as as a co creation process where the stakeholders together with the public officials or nominated by the public officials organizations at the agencies work together to find the solutions to find the best options the alternatives. And so the result is co created. Next slide please. And so prerequisites for effective and widespread public participation works the best when when there are already organized groups. Let's say there are umbrella or representative organizations of certain stakeholders because if there are let's say thousands of agricultural producers or forest owners or or fishermen then then it's very difficult to reach out to them individually and it will become really a big effort to involve them. So it's it's really up to the public authorities as well to promote the organizations and the representative organizations of different stakeholder groups who have the mandate to represent different organizations of the sector. And then it makes it's easy and more effective to address the associations or or or unions or other communities that have the representative mandate. Of course we can rely on good practices but what life has shown is that the regulations are also very much needed. How to organize who to involve for for what and to what extent duration and how the contributions are handled. And of course the different stakeholder groups are more apt to to participate and not only in this particular case but also in in the coming cases in the future when they see that it is not superficial exercise but but really their best knowledge their proposals and ideas are expected which means that public participation takes time and resources and it has to be a well planned. So the benefits of the public participation is a strengthened democratic process and it also increases the trust to the to the authorities and also outcomes of the process. And if the the stakeholder design involved their voice is listened then it also strengthens the ownership of the final document. And just an example the European Commission is doing very widely the public engagement and seeking different opinions from the member states and the stakeholders and so before each of the adoption of a directive or regulation that quite the widespread consultations are held. But of course there are also challenges of public participation and on one hand we can reverse all the benefits into it if those issues are not addressed then then they become challenges. But also I would like to draw from my own experience that yes public participation is a difficult exercise for the public authorities, for the developers and also for the NGOs and communities, civil society groups because it needs special expertise, it needs to follow the rules and so forth. And sometimes even if everything is well planned, well resourced things may go wrong or very complicated. And that's why it's worthwhile of also considering to have let's say a moderator which is not directly public authority person, a civil public officer but an external consultant. And especially this is important in cases where there are controversial viewpoints and maybe the stakeholders are all barricading and it's very difficult to build or restore the trust between the stakeholders. But it's very important to take into consideration that the different modes, the public hearings, working groups, commissions, client roundtables, with this experience there is a growing body of also how to organize those meetings, how to involve people and so everybody knows their role and also the limitations of their contribution. So there are a lot to think about and now I think we can hear some of the examples and practices from your own country. So thank you so much for your attention. Thank you Mrs. Kaya for your presentation. Just to remind you again that the participants can pose questions through Q&A session and in chat there is a link from which you can download the presentations because we already got a question regarding this and my colleague Sniagina already responded but just to remind you again in chat option there is a link from which you can download the presentation that you hear today on the webinar. Now we would like to move on to the presentation on the practice of civil society organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the first presentation regarding the challenges and advantages from the civil society organization perspective will be presented by Viktor Bielic, representative of Center for Environment, Banyaluka. Mr. Viktor Bielic is a geographist, seismologist with university degree from Banyaluka with a vast experience in different programs and activities where he used to work as a volunteer and an expert. He founded and he coordinates Arhus Center Banyaluka and the network of Arhus Centers in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Center for Environment. Mr. Bielic worked as a project coordinator and vice president. He also is one the founder of coalition for the protection of the rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Viktor, the floor is yours. Morning everyone. I'm happy to see that there are so many interested parties and I will use this opportunity to congratulate the International Women's Day to all ladies. I will try to shorten the presentation and briefly just touch upon the Orhus Convention that was adopted in 1998 and ratified a few years later. And this is a novelty where we want the public to participate in the impact assessment of the projects that started from 2020. And then we will talk about the procedures for issues of environment permits and the activities that can have a significant impact on environment and they are implemented through public consultations if so envisaged and through public insight into documentation. I will refer to Kaya's presentation where we talk about the settling of the public in the sense that the comments from public that are delivered are not always high quality comments but they represent the concerns of the public and the deadline is really short for the public especially for those who are not experts on the topic this deadline of 30 days that is envisaged for submitting comments or information by public is not long enough. Public information should be available at least in one public media through the Ministry of Environment Protection or the other public bodies. I'll give you one example from Bosnia and Herzegovina that is related to tsunami of the small hydro plants in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Balkan they envisaged around the 3000 hydro plants small medium and large and more than 400 of them are planned in Bosnia and Herzegovina. All these hydro power plants that got a concessionary agreement became a plant of public interest and they received the status of public interest. Such public interest and I'm talking about 2005 2011 has been pronounced without the quality environment assessment which means that all rivers have been endangered damaged. Currently Bosnia and Herzegovina is exporting one fourth of electrical power which means that we have sufficiently produced electrical power. We have foreign and national investors and they are interested in doing so because they have subsidies for building the hydro power plants. The forest and this is a habitat for very rare and endemic species. This is a photo showing the canyon of the river Sutjeska in Khatalka which are in the national park and you can see here the Balkan wild goat which is protected which is one of the species on the red list of Republica Sipsk and one endemic species which is Adrianto Sutjeska which was named after this area. This is a plant which you can find only there and nowhere in the world. The concession agreements were concluded in 2006 for five many hydro power plants. Four of them are within the park and one is on the boundary of this national park. The government of Republica Sipsk issued the decision approving the construction in 2012. The overall plant power was 12.8 megawatts and they declared the public interest although the investor is a privately owned company. Now let me show you one case study. This is the construction of small hydro power plants on the river Khatjalka. I will provide more details about the procedure. This company filed the application and announced on the 19th March 2013 and informed that the public has access that these are the first steps that the public is informed of the developments and they can get involved. My environmental center reviewed the documentation. We provided our opinion. Some of the arguments we used was that this interferes with Natura 2000 habitats and endangered species such as brown bears, some invertebrates and some endemic species. We also referred to the biodiversity convention and the obligations that Bosnian Herzegovina to which Bosnian Herzegovina committed when it ratified the convention. We also referred to the emerald network which is present there. This is the situation at the public hearing in Focha. As you can see there were not too many participants but it was a mechanism which we used several months thereafter. The relevant ministry actually approved the study on environmental impact. Also the impact was not explained properly and in detail and there were some other failures in the procedure. The center filed an administrative shoot one month thereafter and we stressed several points which pertain to the adverse impact on the environment of these small hydropower plants in the National Park of Sudiska. We said that it was in conflict with the management plan, new management plan which was not adopted yet in the previous plan. No hydropower plants were also envisaged either. Several months thereafter the relevant the responsible ministry issued the new decision which granted the application of the company and the previous decision was amended and the installed power of the turbine for each of these how the power plant was changed. In this procedure it is possible to request changes but if the changes are significant then there is a requirement to carry out a new environmental impact study. However the ministry concluded that it was not necessary in this case to conduct a new study because the changes were not important and not significant in our case that was in our opinion that was not the case in early 2014 we filed a shoot a year thereafter in February 2015 the court rendered the judgment granting our shoot and explaining that the allegations of the shoot were justified and that there was no legal basis or support point in the law to issue the permit for this construction. This is a good example of the participation of public and access to justice. If we are not happy with the outcome of the participation of the public we are in a position to institute administrative procedure. Mr. Victor just to warn you of the time lot you have you should please bring to end this presentation. A month thereafter the responsible ministry issued the conclusion that terminated the procedure and I should also note that there were similar procedures for other two small power plants one is on the boundary and one is within the territory of the national park both were decided to our favor these small hydropower plants are in business in the new spatial plan but the proposal was withdrawn at the session of the National Assembly of Republic of Sepska under the pressure of the public and citizens initiative within which over 7,000 citizens signed the initiative so this was withdrawn from the agenda of the National Assembly of Republic of Sepska. These are several photos showing the campaign of the citizens initiative media are also very important in the whole procedure we did not wait we continued working and conducted the first post war research in this canyon of Herzabka and Sudjeska and we obtained some new knowledge and information of this area and the conclusion of all this is that the participation of the public enabled us to provide comments and during public hearings regarding the adverse impact of small hydropower plants on the canyons we obtained two judgments against the the construction the government decided to stop the process the public is against the small hydropower plants we obtained some new arguments and information and before this procedure was closed we also prepared a complaint under the burn convention and we are waiting for the procedure to be finally and irrevocably terminated and i will show a few photos and the address to which you can send to me any questions or comments thank you thank you mr bielic now we will continue with the new presentation case studies with the examples of contribution of the civil society in the creation of policies in Bosnia Herzegovina by Emina Velyovic she is a member of the arcus center Sarajevo she is executive director of the arcus center Sarajevo and she's a bachelor of law in legal studies she also holds an MA with a focus on the environmental policies and laws in Bosnia Herzegovina Emina is actively working on legal changes in Bosnia Herzegovina for small hydropower plants after a legal declaration of a moratorium on their construction Emina you have the floor we have the presentation of miss emina please emina we cannot hear you we see the presentation but we don't hear you could you please check if you unmuted your mic we see you but we still cannot hear you we still don't receive anything from miss emina miss emina if you could please try to lead the meeting and re-enter we apologize for this inconvenience it's still not time for a break before emina gets back to us we had several questions and as Maya reiterated the questions should be asked in writing the participants have access to Q&A functionality to ask questions and provide them and you can write your questions or logistic problems you may have through the chat box I see some raised hand but unfortunately we are not in a position to let you speak in that so one question was for Mr Bielic and it was in relation with the slide how the participation of the public is implemented in the environment and why the strategic impact assessment has been has not been made public because the presentation said that the small hydropower plants have been developed without energy plants and strategies Victor wrote the answer he said he mentioned the the strategic impact assessment and he said that unfortunately he missed to refer to SEI and now you have his answer in writing now I think emina is back with us but we cannot hear her still we still cannot hear amina now we receive you welcome good morning I apologize for this inconvenience I've received the info that it was a communication problem but we found a solution and now I will proceed with my presentation can you see my presentation if that's not possible perhaps you could use full screen set up I entitled it legal fights and struggles towards sustainable goals from the aspect of public participation as you will see at the in the presentation the ARCOS center focuses on legal remedies for through the promotion of ARCOS convention which second pillar requires adequate participation of the public in all aspects of the environment as my colleague Victor previously noted the the establishment of the coalition for rivers together with the ARCOS center we are trying to prevent the so-called tsunami of construction of many hydropower plants in Bosnia and Herzegovina as you may know Bosnia and Herzegovina is abundant with rivers and the construction of small hydropower plants threatens to destroy and impair our sources of water and development of flora and falunem one of the activities of the coalition for protection of rivers is to support local associations and citizens who fight to to protect individual rivers we have selected the so-called brave women from Kruschica and I would like to invite the participants of the webinar to find out more about this case one of the reasons why the hydropower plants are constructed more and more is the subsidy system the small and medium hydropower plants are subsidized under the electricity law the investors signed contracts with local electrical company and the the term for subsidies is in the federation is 15 years in the public assets got 12 they have very safe source of income and this is an incentive for investors to construct many how their power plants it's not really the protection of environment and this argument that they have used and this is why we are fighting against these detrimental projects I will present two cases and you will be able to clearly see that what are the problem of the participation of public in environmental projects one of them is related to hydropower plants and the other is related to waste management the first case study is a small hydropower plant usche it should have been constructed on the Lashva river the concession was granted by the Canton central Bosnian Canton and for the small hydropower plant usche in September 2018 the investor applied for issues of environmental permit and for the environmental impact study for this small hydropower plant the ministry of the Canton held the public hearing however the way in which it was published it was not in compliance with the law on environmental protection the citizens found exit out about this public hearing accidentally through a small advertisement but this invitation was not announced through public media or official website or local newspaper but the brave women from Krushtitsa who live in this municipality informed our center that there would be the public hearing on the 30th of yule 2019 and the aca center found out about this public hearing I participated in that public discussion and they made it very difficult for me because when I wanted to get to the hole where the public consultations were to be held one of the officials from Witte's municipality tried to physically prevent me from coming into the hole and telling me that I need an invite to come in but I have to underline that this happened before the corona pandemic in 2019 I explained that I am a lawyer by profession and I know my rights and he has to let me in to participate in public consultations after that I was enabled to participate after my fight and I send written comments after the public consultation after submitted comments and since I participated as a party in the procedure the ministry was obligated to provide me with a copy of environmental permit which is in line with the Orhus Convention but they failed to do so because and that's why we sent a request based on the law on access to information and the ministry said that they enabled the insight into the documentation which means that any person could come into the offices of the ministry and inspect the documents we send an appeal to the ministry and we said this is not in line with the Orhus Convention because the ministry was obligated first to make a minutes on public consultations and then enable citizens to access permits on internet and they were obligated to send a copy on issued environmental permit especially if in line with the request for access to information that was requested and based on those explanations we sent an appeal to the ministry for environment protection and then we brought a lawsuit before the Contonal Court and we got a judgment in our favor from the Navitramnik Contonal Court so based on that you can conclude how much knowledge and effort you need to have to receive a piece of information that you require so public is forced to use legal remedies to obtain basing information that is supposed to be public and provided upon the request so citizens who are aware of those issues like brave women of Khrushchevtsa addressed our organization and other organization to help us in the legal matters and protect their rights in a true democratic society which wants to protect environment this should have never happened so this is an example where participation of public which was made difficult but still enabled a voice of citizens to be heard another example that I will present you is a positive example where at the beginning before issuing the environmental permit the citizens managed to prevent a very harmful project which would not only endanger a local community but also surrounding cities including Sarajevo in August 2017 Federation Administration of Civil Protection addressed the Ministry of Economy in Goreshda and the Government of Goreshda with a request to establish a range for destruction of explosives a month later in September 2017 company UNIS addressed this ministry with a request to solve a problem of waste explosives from the production process and previously they were destroyed at the Trier Tejas site where there are private properties but since citizens started raising their voices against it this company wanted to find another good solution so that's why they addressed the ministry the Ministry of Economy in Goreshda and government held meetings on several occasions with this company and with the Federation Civil Protection Administration afterwards they identified that the best site for destruction of explosives would be Archevac Chanak so they internally decided on the location waste explosives destruction is very risky business and it's very harmful for environment and as a rule it's done deeply underground to prevent the particles from the explosives floating around but this location is on a higher ground above Goreshda and the very destruction of these explosives would mean that the weather elements would spread those particles around Goreshda and probably reach other cities including Sarajevo regardless of the appeals from the local community which obtain information that this range will be built and before holding a public consultation they sent the documents to the government and requesting that this decision be cancelled nothing happened the experts tried to communicate with the ministry several times on their 15th session extraordinary session in August 2018 they passed a decision where they established public interest for building this range and then the public addressed our center and asked for legal help because they were aware how much this range would be harmful for their health and the surrounding cities as well so the public gathered peacefully frequently and in the meantime Orha Center provided information to the public regarding the state of affairs and the current status of this location after that a declaration was adopted that this decision be set aside and this declaration was encouraged by the legal advice given from Orha Center and we were able to establish that they violated so many regulations before passing the decision on establishing the public interest and we addressed various institutions to set aside this decision but very important factor was the public because they communicated throughout with the government with the authorities and they peacefully gathered and they implemented the second pillar of Orha's convention which is public gathering regardless of the fact that they were left out from the beginning of the process what I want to underline is the request for the access to information because all citizens have problems to obtain the response to their request in this case we were regularly we regularly received responses from the authorities so that we were able to exert pressure in time and at relevant stakeholders. At the session of the Scottish Assembly in February 2020 a decision was made to set aside the decision on establishing the public interest for building a range for destruction of explosives and this is the result of the efforts of the citizens of public and the centers Orha Center and this is a great example how public can utilize their rights and motivate the authorities to work on their behalf on their best interest to protect environment. That's it from me thank you for your attention. Thank you Amina. Now according to agenda we will have a brief break it is supposed to be 10 minutes so I propose that we be back 20 because we're a bit over the schedule so we are short in this break for eight to eight minutes so 10 20 we will be back 10 20 thank you. Greetings everyone our fifth web in which is titled benefits of public participation in environmental policy making learning from B&A and Stoney um heard some case studies in the last presentation about the public participation in B&H study cases and now we will hear the government experience of public participation and involvement in environment policy making uh Estonian case study. This case study will explain how and when the public gets information, how the public is invited to participate, identification of the challenges and benefits of public participation from the perspective of the Estonian governmental body and this presentation will be held by Mr. Kaupo Hanema is representative from the Ministry of the Environment Estonia. Mr. Kaupo Hanema has a master degree in natural sciences from Tallinn University served as a head of environment management department from 2014-2018 and since then he has been deputy secretary general of environmental management in environmental technology and international cooperation with the ministry of the environment Estonia. Before working at the ministry he was also an environmental consultant at a private environmental consultation company so I am to give the floor to Mr. Hanema to start with his presentation. Go ahead. Good morning. I hope you can hear me. It's nice to see you already saw my background working in the ministry of environment in Estonia at the moment but previously I worked for for many years as a consultant and environmental expert in a private company so I have a background from different sides from the ministry and a lot of experience regarding environmental impact assessments and strategic environmental assessments and during that I participated and organized a lot of public participations both the publication of the documents as well as the public hearings and now I've been working in the ministry of environment for many years and have the background of as a policymaker. Next slide please. As many presentations have already shown there is a legal background of international background and the EU directives and as mentioned in many times already the AUKUS Convention is a key principle and key treaty for public participation and the environmental information sharing and the publication and it's the same in Estonia and Estonia is a party both the AUKUS Convention as well as the ESPO Convention and its protocol that is for the environmental impact assessments and the strategic environmental assessments and both are the key for public public participations and the EIA and the SCA are both the core of these these instruments are the public participation and the public caterings and then the EU also has the directives and it's the system that is usually that the EU is also a party of the conventions and the EU is a party of the AUKUS and the ESPO Convention as a organization and they transpose those principles into EU law mainly different directives so there's a directive for the information public assistance to environmental information and the peeling as well as the EIA directive and SCA directive. Next slide please and Estonia also has transpose both British I mentioned as well the directives so in Estonia law has all those directives in place and there is a brief legal background of Estonian context and of course we have the access to information and already in the constitution but the main laws are the administrative procedure act that is for all the procedures that has to follow and and also the EIA and SCA and permitting they're all has to comply with the this act and in you know environmental law there's a general part of the environmental product that is the main principle of the environmental law environmental principles as well as the public participations so it's the system in Estonia that we have this it's like a framework law and then we have specific laws so including Waste Act, Ambient Geo Protection Act, Water Act, Nature Conservation Act, EIA and SCA act and then the main principle in principles in the general part of the environmental product and then the specific part in different specific laws and there is also other non-environmental legislation including Planning Act. The Planning Act is regulating how the spatial plans are the system for the spatial plans as well as the procedures and includes also the SCA part of the spatial planning because many spatial plans are obligatory to have the SCA as well and some some the cases there is the screening necessary and then sometimes in some cases it's the voluntary and also the building code that regulates how the buildings are constructed and as well as that building permitting and it's it can be the case that the building permit meets and SCA EIA as well so basically there is a many many acts that regulates the permitting or SCA or EIA this demand how the public should be involved in the process. Next slide please. Here's the main principles and all these principles are in the general part of the environmental act and it's mainly principles from the Orchid Foundation around in principle that is quite general but of course one of the main principles regarding the public participation is the right to participate in the making decision of significant environmental impact basically to participate in the EIA and SCA process and also right to participate in drafting instruments of general application which have significant impact on environment. It means also that the permitting process is open and the permitting and the application and the permitting of both public. Next slide please. To go more in the different part of of the process is the important part is also the public participation of trapped legislations. In Estonia we have a specific database that is accessible for the public where all the trust regulations are open and the public can have an access and also the trust law is sent to specific stakeholders. It includes the ministers but other stakeholders include NGOs via this database and the history is there at the moment if I want to see how let's say EIA law has involved it's possible to see the trust regulations the comments from the ministries and other participants, other stakeholders and it's accessible. Next slide please. Next is the public participation spatial plans and we have different spatial plans starting from national spatial plan and the data spatial plans and there is others and the EIA is mandatory for national spatial plans comprehensive plans and usually also national designated spatial plans that is basically for the the the objects that have a significant impact including railways being motorways and so on. So they are mandatory to have the SCA but let's say for the detailed spatial plans that is for very detailed and takes a small area and if it's not having a significant impact then it's it's not necessary but all those spatial plans have also this public procedure. Basically it's published and if necessary public hearings as well. Next slide please. For the environmental permits as I already mentioned the environmental permitting is an open procedure. It means that the permit applications are public unless there is a business secret. This part of the permit is not public but it's have to show that it is really a business secret and it's not quite that often that the recent public secret because everything is not the secret especially if it's impact the stakeholders and the permits as well we have a specific once again the database where the environmental permits are are in place both the the applications as well as the letters and the decision and the permit itself and it's accessible for a wider public and there is a moment three type of permits environmental permit integrated environment the permit integrated environment permit is so-called IPPC directive that comes from EU directive or industrial emissions directive and it's of those permits often EIA as well and then there is another permit mainly registration that is so-called low environmental impact the activities but environmental permit sometimes has EIA as well. Next slide please. Of course the main instruments for the public participation is that the environmental impact assessment as EIA and the strategic environmental assessment so-called SCA and both as we know our open procedure and uses active public participation and as prior already mentioned in the presentation the fourth of the EIA is the public participation and the use of public information as a tool. SCA necessarily has different procedures for spatial plans and other strategies plans or programs but there is two the common is that at least two publication of the documents and at least two public hearings for SCA for strategies plans and programs it's the the screening stage ends with the program that is published and there is a public hearing as well but for the spatial plans it's called the program but otherwise the main principle is the same. The screening it means the terms of preference for making the impact assessment and the terms of preference for making the statement and the public hearings and also the EIA has at least two public patients the EIA program phase and the report phase and two public hearings and to be a bit more concrete the public display must last for no less than 40 days for SCA and EIA programs and 21 days for SCA and 30 days for EIA reports and many of those days come from the relevant direct next slide please and for the environmental impact assessment the decision maker gives a notice of the public display of and public consultation regarding an environmental impact assessment the program at least in the official publication it's a specific web page I might put the other under where everybody has have the access and see all the the publications of EIA programs or EIA reports as well as initiating the EIA all the initiations are also published in in this official web page and also at the expense of the developer in one national newspaper or one local or county newspaper so there is a notice in newspaper and the developer pays for this advertisement and in at least one public building or place of the location of the proposed activity like shops, libraries, schools, pastels basically these three different places the government could download the web page and newspaper and also in in one public building or place and also the decision maker sends the email to the specific stakeholders next slide and everyone has the right to assess the the program and and also make a comments and get answers from from the comments so basically if I read the EIA program then I have an opinion and I can write my opinion or ask questions and the questions I have to get the answer during the public hearing or later in written format and it is the same actually for the EIA report as well so basically and it's the same for the SCA the SCA program or the EIA program is published and I can make an opinion and get an answer and same for the for the report I read the report I I have an opinion I sent my my opinion my questions and I have to get the the answers next slide please so it was the the main principle of that and now some at some points what is that the benefits why why we are using for that and and first and very important is that if there's a decision that affects the the people they need to know what happened and and also because it affects their lives if there would be a new factory or a new railway or or airport or motorway they need to know how to plan their the lives and make decisions and also the public participation helps to improve the quite the decision because the the public especially the the neighbors they know the best the local conditions they they know the history they they know also the social values of of the community so it's it's very important to get this information and it can improve the the decision also to to provide to provide important information and sometimes it's it's discussable but the hips to find the new solutions speak about them I believe and as a previous expert that as well that the the partnership with the the stakeholders gets the new solutions and for the EIA and the SCA the the key principle is to find an alternative and and it's the one of the best ways to to have a best alternative and to have a variation of alternatives also to avoid the conflict because often the the conflict comes when the decision has already made a very end of the decision that that if someone gets to know that there will be an activity and and then it's wow now it's here why I don't know why I don't have anything to know about that or then there is too too late and one principle is to to start the public participation and to share the information as as soon as possible often the the conflicts come from from that the late too late stage is of sharing the information and in a steering there is a couple of cases one case it was for the new pulp mill it was it had very high involvement in in the in the process and often there was some misinformation or or some people we felt that it was too late to to get the information and the decision was already decided that the location will be near the Estonian second biggest city so and and the conclusion was that the process was cancelled and and there is no new new pulp mill it's good or no it's discussable but but anyway it's an example of of one process that was cancelled because of the different understanding of of the stakeholders and the developer also in the case people and the increases there's application and strength the strength of democracy and it's it's also very important in democratic countries that the democracy is a part of the of the society and if there is a decision everybody has to have the right to to give their opinion and to participate and and feel that they are a part of decision making processes but of course it's those are the benefits and everything has pros and cons and I say often is more challenges than than the benefits because of the the the release always that the or very often that the public doesn't have the enough understanding of of the process or the activity let's say if it's it's very complicated activity and only a couple of designers understand that it's it's very difficult to to call public to understand everything every aspect to to to assess or understand the assessment of the impacts and and it's difficult to to show it in very simplified by way and that's why very often there is a conflict because of understanding of different aspects if there is a designer and there is a public they are just telling a different story they tell the same story but in the different ways and it's difficult to to understand what the each other are talking about also the people have different values and it's it's very important one like rape or one like another one like the view ball and it's it's the right and that's the way one one like one one people loves the movies one the second wants to go to theater so it's it's just a different than adopted different values and the public the stakeholders even in one community they can have very different values and and they can have conflict and how to make the decision when there isn't no common understanding or same same values it's it's very difficult often it's a conflict of interest some will get the benefits and other costs some will get the job others get the impacts one can sell the land others gets the impacts so in the same community and it's very often in my previous background I had one a dairy farm that was more than one thousand cows there and and there was exactly one hundred the participants and half of them was against the the activity and other half was was pro for that and and those who got the benefits that families had the job or who leaves the land they was okay to have the the dairy farm but those who was not involved or didn't get any benefits they was they were against and it's it's understandable because of of the benefits and and and the costs and also the different understanding of the same information if I speaking to you at the at the moment I I'm very definitely understand that that everybody gets the the information in in their way and it's it's if you read the same sentence we we just understand it in a different way and it's it's also difficult to to manage those those situations and also of course the participation they find and resources and sometimes very we have the very urgent development we we have little time to to make make the decision and and sometimes then we just go very fast and then the and the public and the stakeholders lagging behind because of of let's say if we need to have a power plant to get the electricity and and we need it very very quickly it's it's we're going very fast but but it cannot be the way actually we should take the time but of course we you know that in sometimes it's just so so urgent so there's pros and cons for for the public participation but as a policymaker I agree and in I believe that the benefits are there is more benefits than challenges for that and we need to let the public to participate in the policymaking to to get because but we are doing we are the public servants and we are serving the public it means that we need to take time to to involve involve them to to our processes because it's it's not done it's later more conflict than when we started in the other stage so thank you very much for all this yes I just missed the next slide but you you can see it now and yeah thank you very much for for listening and if there is any question and answers I can answer right now then I'm happy to do it and it was a very interesting presentation from the point of view of decision maker we had presentations from different perspectives from the non-governmental organization point of view and from the authorities now we will move to panel discussion we received many questions in the Q&A window and Snyajna and I kind of group them so Snyajna will read them briefly some of those questions were already answered in writing by the panelists but we will still read some of them so that the experts all experts and all participants hear the answer Snyajna go ahead thank you Maya thank you thanks to our experts because we already can see that some of the questions were answered we made a comment regarding question posed to Viktor and if somebody missed that question I need to say that Viktor already answered that question that the decision was adopted when there was no strategy for environment protection so I hope that all of you can access details relevant to that response we had a question posed in English and Kaya already responded and this was about the letter of the public participation she said that the work with the letter is really interesting for a cult organization especially in working with youth because they work is based on heart letter where the biggest challenge is how to overcome the last three levels when the participation really takes place and the question is how to motivate the decision makers to involve public including the youth in the decision-making process and are there any good examples from Estonia Kaya answered that the youth participation depends on how the topic is attractive and whether it's attractive to youth and whether the youth organizations are involved in resolving the issue and presenting their positions climate change activities in Europe and globally youth participation was significantly high and long-term development projects and their long-term impact on environments such as energy production, options, nature preservation, waste development always attract youth if Kaya feels that she needs to supplement this issue regarding youth motivation this is your chance Kaya. Thank you maybe after how to attract different stakeholders groups but this also applies to the youth segment as well that it should be something that triggers the interest of course there are rules as myself and Kauko were explaining and also the Bosnian horrible centers that how the different rules and procedures are being applied and this is I mean the rules should be there but let's say that from our experience there are cases where you can get let's say very little attention and then you get a huge amount of attention as as Kauko was explaining this pulp mill case where thousands of people tens of thousands of people were on the streets and gathering two different demonstrations and meetings and you may get just maybe one or two local people when there is let's say a wind park or just one wind mill case so it's very different but it doesn't mean necessarily that the public hasn't been involved if there is little interest if their rules have been applied the people who were invited but they didn't show any interest so we can't conclude that it was a total failure but it was just that there was no interest so there is no no problem with that but what I wanted to mention was that two years ago I was part of a research or survey among different stakeholders of EIA and DCA and previously in the previous studies it was always when there was a question about what is the most difficult part of the EIA and DCA process and and largely it was the public participation because it's it's needs to be organized by the public authorities there's a quite a big burden on the public authorities how to organize that and not to get blamed but this time two years ago the public participation was not an issue but a little bit from a different angle the public authorities were saying that now the public consultations and information and questioning it has moved to the social media it's not just in the auditoriums or in the rooms but now it's in the facebook in the twitter different home pages and this has made the public authorities a really a challenge how to manage all those social media environments or platforms and and how to make it meaningful rather than just that there are thousands of comments and and viewpoints and and how to manage that so this is where the public participation also evolves and and it should be taken into account thank you thank you especially for your last part of the answer where you talk about the communication channels and the social media so this is really relevant for the youth that was referred to in the question next question is there any possibility to make a question list or checklist with the rights and obligations of the citizens organizers of the public consultation and investors that would enable free physical access and participation in consultations this is a question that could be interesting for some of our Estonian experts if possible do you have an example of a checklist with the rights and rules rights and obligations Kaia or Mr. Kaupo would you like to answer to that do you have any examples whether there exist a checklist or list of questions rights and obligations of citizens and organizers not not in the question form but Kauko can correct me but not in a checklist form but yeah there are I mean good practices lots of different projects guidebooks and guidelines how to organize a good public hearing a public meeting and of course the practice itself I mean it develops and builds on the previous practices what to avoid what to strengthen and then so forth but I wouldn't say we have a checklist or how do you comment Kauko if I may step in please send you a list for the SI 8 by several entities so those are the recommendations for improvement of the process so we would like to ask Mr. Zaraan to send us those lists and we will forward those lists to all participants great that would be for Bosnia and Herzegovina Mr. Kaupo wanted to say something and add to what Kaia said yes I want to say that as far as we don't have a specific checklist but we have lots of different handbooks and guidelines for the EIA and SCA and the public participation is one of the part of those documents and maybe something interesting to know maybe that as we have this different difficult time at the moment with the coronavirus and for the public meetings are not allowed or are very limited we have had almost a year now the possibility to have the public hearings only with the online or virtual way so that before we didn't have that we didn't have a we haven't changed the legislation but before that auction was not used but now it's used for several times because it's better to have the virtual meeting and the gathering rather than postpone it or postpone the old roses of course there is a difficulties to get access everybody especially for older people to get the equipments and also the experience or knowledge to have those mechanisms difficult but we see it as a way forward and maybe the hybrid meetings will be the future so that especially it's good to involve stakeholders that is far away we know that for the access to the environmental information is not only for the locals but also the NGOs that can be sometimes far away if we have in one part of Estonia the activity and the public hearing is in dislocation but the NGO is in Halin let's say then it's much easier to get access and then the participate the meeting so I see many pros for the future. Thank you for your answer it was great to mention modern technologies that turned out to be really important during the pandemic time and I believe that this is something that will be used more frequently in future so for next question we already got an answer but it's let me read it again for Kaya tell us about the pyramid what does it mean when you mention therapy and transfer of authority therapy is when the public participation is seen as the remedy as the solution for the problem and in case of transfer of authority the citizens get a task to manage certain activity like when NGO provides services that pertain to the issues of managing the nature parks or similar or organized protection measures for certain protected species the next question from Vitas she said that she heard Amina's presentation and she knows the problem and it's an excellent example for people to know what to do and how to change things the question is are there any improved solutions in the new federation a law on environment protection and Victor said yes we see improvements compared to the previous law especially in area of public participation in the SIA but there is room for improvement still and he touched upon the situation where the last amendments to the environmental law and access to information cancelling of the advisory board if Amina has anything to comment on or supplement this she can take the floor I'm here can you hear me this time yes you can see the improvement in new law article 40 item 8 it prescribes that the comments of the public are taken into account in previous law from 2009 it was prescribed that it should be taken into account so although this should maybe this word should maybe does not mean a lot but in legal perspective it means a lot because it means that the standard is changed that means that in new law the authorities will take into account the comments but according to our house convention it is prescribed that the authorities are obligated to take into account comments of the public so it's a it's even step further but our law is slowly aligning with the artist convention in this in this area thank you Amina it is great to hear that there are improvements and the next question you have information in how many cases the strategic environmental impact assessment was conducted with regard to sectoral plans and program victor said that for several plans and programs management of basins and spatial plans involved the strategic assessment could you add something to this yes there were several process that involved the strategic assessment but what we could see here and what we could hear from the experience of other countries that the process of communication and information of public is the most challenging point because all the options are open at that point and it has been the practice to to inform public very scarcely at that stage so the public does not become aware so it is very good to have multiple managers of this communication process who will focus on communication of information to the public so in conclusion I believe that there has been insufficient strategic environmental assessment especially with regard to the development for instance of energy strategy although the strategy is quite new there has been no verification of this strategy through the strategic impact assessment and now this is our opportunity to improve the process and I thank Zodan for forwarding to ask this instruction how we can verify whether SEA met all the requirements thank you victor Amina if you have anything to add from the center of Sarajevo if you don't have anything we can proceed with the next question I could agree with my colleague it is only rarely that we have the proper procedure not only at the federation level but also at the local level we have had this example of development and the construction of a hydropower plant we have in place continental spatial plants and management plants which are not given to public consultations very well I believe that that in our working groups it became clear that there is a lot to do on this level the strategic environmental assessment and development of plants me a question from Mr. Heynma in which phase do you issue the environmental permit for construction of some major projects Mr. Heynma did you hear me or should I repeat my question yes I am very very well it's it's different but the but the main stage of granting different permits is we have this detailed plan then we have environment permit and then we have building permit it means usually the environment permit is before granting the building permit but the final decision if we use the expo convention when the final decision basically is the granting the use of the building it means that the physical permit is not actually the last one but the right to use a building is the final decision thank you thank you similar question to local presenters panelists when is the environmental permit issued in the federation and what is the directive which is used for issuance of this permit I hope you can hear me the new law envisages the timeline if there is an environmental permit which has been granted before its renewal public hearing is required previously that was not the case because the federal ministry issued environmental permits by default and the period of value of environmental permit is five years but even for renewal of the environmental permit it is required to hold the public hearing especially if these are they concern large projects large plants this does not need to be formal public hearing it depends on the quality on the scope of the plant whether it interferes with protected areas and so on if I may add something in answer to this question yes indeed the environmental permit should be issued before the construction but I should say that in practice this has been abused this provision has been abused very often we had projects or buildings that had been developed and environmental permit is issued after the construction we have a very specific example a small hydropower plant in the municipality Kotovl this plant was issued last year and the permit was issued in December 2020 yes that's uh has happened but uh also the construction permit should follow after the environmental permit in our country too thank you Victor the question was focused on the federation so I asked Amina to comment first the next question do our entities have electronic database of environmental permits and are these databases open for public as in Estonia the question for both of you I can say only that it is partially available to the public it's better than it was before but of course there are still some gaps that need to be addressed one very important aspect which is not made public is the decision on construction and you cannot find these permits anywhere I'm certain that there are databases in the relevant institutions but these databases are not public while environmental permits at least in the public as the databases quite updated and in the federation I believe that they are also doing well this may be also related to the lack of technical capacity sometimes I should say that in the public as the situation is much better as my colleagues said in the federations they are working on this at the federation level while at the internal level they had a lot to do to comply with this requirement as for the deficiencies and gaps yes in the public as there are also some gaps already uh we uh from the arco center we applied for access to uh an environmental permit and we were not able to do so after they we received answered that it was available on the internet and in the in the meantime this environmental permit really was available although we were certain that it was not available at the time when we wanted to see it but anyway the electronic access is rather good in the public as a thank you emina but we received the answer and we received the answer and we see that we are not as good as istonia and this on this matter how do you involve the interested public from the other country if there is a potential cross-border impact this is an interesting question and if our panelists could try to answer this question whoever wants to answer this question please i can try this question yes i i try to answer um as for convention is is actually regulate the mandatory part of uh of the the the cross-border um trans-boundary cases and as i was to terms member of the implementation committee of the espo convention uh i start with that that there is unfortunately many cases that um the the convention has reached and i i also remember that there was many cases from uh regarding the posnian erzegorina regarding um especially some our plans uh i hope um you will be um better in the in future and and and the the the espo convention into account as as much as possible and what they also the as yeah the the espo convention is is the main principle and and those requirements should be met in in any way but also there is a good ways to to have the bilateral agreements and it's also in the in the convention and in istonia we have a bilateral agreement with the the finland and and the latvia and we uh already had with the latvia before the espo convention and we had the the bilateral meeting agreement with the with the finland for also for many years and what it gives it gives that we have every year uh meeting as well to go all the all the brochures and we can discuss uh the the the pros and cons and the from different cases let's say we we have one ongoing case with the talin with estonia and and finland regarding there is a proposed activity to have a the railway tunnel under the sea between talin and helsinki it's more than 80 kilometers and we have also established this special ad of working group that has the expert level people from different parties and different authorities and we can discuss everything and it can get the better results and also what we are in estonia doing is if you get the notification from another party we send it to stakeholders to to get the information that is necessary for estonia to to participate in in the process or or not and we do the same with the notifications and we have this so-called in-case principle as well that if we are not sure we send it it's easier to to send it rather than later uh to to to have a case in in estonia implementation going to something because it's it's not very complicated and if there is a public in in affected country they should participate and then estonia at the moment we have a case where we sent last last week to our stakeholders about the wind offshore windpark in in Denmark so it it sounds very if you look at the map and and see how far is is Denmark from from from estonia but but migrating birds are or some that is is a common between the Denmark and estonia and it can affect our our birds populations and and so to to have those notifications is is very important even if the affected party doesn't want to to participate at least we have shared the information and something that they can think is is better rather than than not to do it if you don't know then please send it it's it's better rather than to not to send it thanks if i may before you uh involve another participant miss uh numic from the federal ministry of tourism sent an answer to chat she said we have a very few experience in the implementation of espoir convention it is necessary to initiate activities on its implementation and also we have very complex procedure because the entity ministries cannot address the other country uh they can do so only through the ministry of foreign trade uh and uh uh foreign affairs thank you miss numic for this information for sharing this information with us and uh i apologize sense nezana there is a continuation miss swadham said that regarding the previous question environmental permit i don't think we still have clear procedures in the our bylaws and we we cannot distinguish clearly before between the transposition and implementation of directives s e a e i a the environmental permit is issued for industrial plants but the new law on environmental protection provides possibilities to regulate these procedures and i hope we will have an opportunity to further address this issue thank you once again and i think that victor wanted to also provide an answer to this question regarding the public participation of public from other countries for cross border projects am i correct yes indeed i just wanted to share with you some of our experience i do agree with miss swadham that we don't have sufficient experience this is the fact and also the procedure that requires involvement of ministry of foreign trade and economic affairs but again we come to the question how decisions are made and how it is determined whether a project has cross border implications we have the project the hydra power plant book vila and the project on the dream a river dream a river uh in this case uh monta negro it was uh it is monta negro and it was determined that there is no implication for the the other country and uh the participation of their public was prevented when the license changed and the study changed that this was not subject to cross border public participation so again we have an example how we can see things differently and interpret things differently i um happy that miss heyma mentioned our thermal power plants because they are among the major pollutants and they do have cross border implication thank you e victor um the clock shows that we uh come to the end of this webinar but i would like to use this minute or two for the last message which i discussed with my colleague maya and other participants organize us we should distinguish between the participation of public in early stages of the decision making process the example this is the example of the e-sub project development we involve the public and we seek to involve the public in this very early stage and to obtain as many opinions as possible uh unlike other cases and studies which required participation of the public but which were already at a late stage of development so how can we prevent certain problems in environmental management i think this is the main answer provided by today's webinar perhaps i would uh ask for a brief comment from miss kawpa given the fact that he is available only shortly here and the estonian experience is very important of course we will continue discussing things with kaya and victor and other colleagues now miss kawpa if you could just briefly address the examples or specific mechanisms for the participation of the public in the development of environmental strategy in estonia just thank you um first i have to say i i think we have many uh shortcomings in um in our um system to to get the participation in the in the very very early stages and that one um is for the EIA and uh is that the way initiate the EIA when the permit application has already submitted it means that a lot of work has already done to to comply the permit application and and we can even start to the EIA when the permit application is is fully uh submitted it means it's not partial but they have to be officially started the permitting process and i i think it gets a lot of out from from the EIA because EIA should be done starting from very early stages and now we have a voluntary uh uh mechanism to to initiate the EIA without the permit application especially important for for the integrated permits because if you make a full permit application for the integrated permitted basic you basically have done one EIA and then you start officially but now the the developer can come and and initiate the EIA process when they are very early early stages and we we currently um have uh have evaluated our our system and Kaja was um was part of that Kaja analyzed our our system and what should be improved and i think one one is we need to improve especially to get the the public and the information in very early stages as i um had in my my slides uh once the the the challenge is that if you involve too late and the public feels that the decision has already done it's uh it's too it's too late and if it's uh if uh developer uh puts together a full permit application and submit it it usually means that they know that this complies with everything and and there will be a decision but yeah maybe in Stenia it's it's the best way best country to at the moment how to get very early stages uh the developers and and i have involved for processes actually EIA is just to legalize the activity there is already building there is already basically activity and but that to to be legal it needs EIA and and for those cases it it's been rare now but but before in the in the past there was quite the quite the many for that so that you you have theory or poetry or p-farm that is operating and but too many many peaks there and to legalize you you make an EIA and basically it's it's too late so you you should avoid it and one way is to grant the the building permit after the the environment the permit because uh if you start building something already without the building permit it's too late once again to to have the the EIA so i i i recommend if it's yeah possible to and it's in Stenia we are doing the same to if it's not even in in the legislation to uh to teach our uh our decision makers that the first should be the environment for me thank you i hope you get something from my my answer thank you very much for all your answers and the discussion and unless there are further questions uh i think we answered all the questions that we received uh in the q and a box or chat box and i believe we can finish the webinar session and we have another comment from miss swada nomich from the federation ministry of tourism and environment early stage of involvement of public the participation of the public in the issues of spatial documentation the water acts concessions this should we should focus on this because the environment indeed should involve the public and if something is constructed without relevant permits it shall be illegal facility which someone is trying to legalize and we keep discussing environmental permit but we should focus on environmental impact assessment thank you maya before we say goodbye i should i would like to thank all the participants for the participation for the attendance and in the chat box you have the link where you can upload all the presentation and i thank sam and lemesh who shared the the link for sea youtube channel where you can see this webinar again and or share it with others on my own behalf on on behalf of my colleague maya maratich tearo i thank you very much for your attendance and i hope that in the development of issa we will be able to show how arcus convention should be applied and how quality public participation should take place have a nice day yeah thank you so much