Nature’s Lawyer has 150 lawsuits
Nature’s Lawyer
NATURE’S LAWYER is the voice YOU give nature before the law. NATURE’S LAWYER fights in court to secure justice in cases of illegality documented by Agent Green’s investigators. We are pursuing more than 150 lawsuits to defend Romania’s protected natural areas. Some of these concluded in favour of forests in 2020.
For many years, we have been pursuing costly lawsuits against the state to secure justice for forests before the law. But the situation is completely out of control, and these lawsuits are nothing compared with the thousands of offences committed every day.
We launched a fundraising campaign to support these lawsuits, through which anyone wishing to make a practical contribution to saving forests can do so with an online donation.
Here are some of the most important victories we have achieved for forests recently:
We saved more than 34,000 hectares of forest that were due to be cut down in protected natural areas in Domogled – Valea Cernei National Park and the Platoul Mehedinți Geopark
Forest management plans are now public. These documents contain information about every patch of forest in Romania and the harvesting plans of the state or private owners: the volume of timber in the forest, tree species, the average age of stands, the types of cutting planned and the volume of timber approved for harvesting over the next 10 years. From today, anyone can request the forest management plan from the ministry or the forest district in their area of interest to find out about the forest. Once obtained, these documents can be used to see whether the forest is cared for properly or abusively and to take action when timber cut and considered legal actually represents destructive logging that must be stopped before the damage is done. Forest management plans are approved by order of the Minister of the Environment.
Those sued for access to forest management plans, which are public information, were Romsilva, environmental protection agencies, private forest districts and the Ministry of the Environment, Waters and Forests. There are currently no cases concerning access to information still before the courts, but the Ministry of the Environment, Waters and Forests can still appeal in one case. All the institutions continue to refuse to comply with the judgments, claiming either that they no longer hold the plans, in the case of the environmental protection agencies, or that they cannot communicate them electronically and requesting thousands of euros for providing paper copies, or simply refusing to respond.
We succeeded in suspending the logging planned for the Poieni, Baia de Aramă and Lerești forest districts, the latter containing Romania’s largest area of clear-cutting, over 3,700 hectares. We succeeded in having the Alpina Borșa forest management plan in Munții Maramureșului Natural Park annulled, as well as the forest management plan of SC Boișoara Industries SRL in the Făgăraș Mountains.
Other cases are pending to annul and suspend further forest management plans that overlap with protected areas and have been drawn up unlawfully, in breach of the principles of prevention and precaution in decision-making, without environmental assessments or measures to avoid adverse impacts on species and habitats.
Agent Green’s systemic complaints, made together with EuroNatur and Client Earth, resulted in the European Commission launching infringement proceedings because the Ministry of the Environment allows massive illegal logging and the destruction of protected areas, because access to forest management plans is refused, and because forest management plans in protected areas are implemented without properly conducted environmental assessments, destroying species and habitats that are priorities at European level. For its failure to comply, the Government received an ultimatum in July 2020. Continued non-compliance will lead to hefty fines to be set by the European Court of Justice. Agent Green has collected new data showing that the ministry is only pretending to resolve problems that continue at an accelerating pace.
Agent Green also brought a lawsuit against Hidroelectrica to annul a Government Decision establishing public expropriations and the construction of an overhead power line for a hydropower plant built illegally, since the building permits had previously been annulled by the court. This concerns the hydropower plant in the Jiu Gorge, a project from the communist period that Hidroelectrica wants to complete today under legislation from before 1989. Under current legislation, the project can no longer proceed because neither a strategic environmental assessment nor an appropriate assessment has been carried out
We brought a lawsuit to annul a screening decision for the management plan of Cheile Carașului Semenic Park. Romsilva has administered the park since 2014. To date, Romsilva has not managed to propose a lawful management plan; the proposed plan is practically empty of content, lacking essential information about the presence and location of protected species and habitats, the boundaries of reserves and protected areas within the park, and so on. No management plan for this protected area has yet been proposed and approved, and the proposal made does not contain the elements of a management plan compliant with the law.
ANANP and the Ministry of the Environment, Waters and Forests refuse to terminate the park administration contract currently awarded to RNP Romsilva. They consider that enforcing the nullity clauses arising from Romsilva’s failure to fulfil its obligations as a good administrator is an expression of the contracting parties’ will, which is manifestly unlawful and illicit in light of the general characteristics of absolute nullity and the public nature of a contract for administering a protected area.
Agent Green has brought several cases against Transelectrica. Transelectrica benefits from a special law, Law 220/2019, which allows it to build 400 Kv overhead power lines through protected areas without taking sensitive zones into account or properly carrying out environmental impact assessment procedures, thus endangering both the integrity of environmental components and human health. These overhead power lines generate electromagnetic fields that can cause certain forms of cancer. One such project is the Reșița (Pancevo) – Arad overhead power line, whose chosen route crosses several protected areas, destroying primary forests and special bird areas that are particularly endangered by such projects, and harming human health, affecting the town of Anina.
In this case, we also lodged a complaint with the European Commission, which is due to be examined.
We requested the suspension and annulment of the ministerial order approving two forest management plans for Bârnova Repedea Forest, which is protected in two partially overlapping N2000 sites. The plans were issued unlawfully, despite no management plan having been drawn up. Thus, the environmental assessment procedure did not take into account the areas where birds nest, feed or mate, and very old trees over 200 years of age were felled.
Tell your friends too! If you know nature lovers who would like to get more involved but do not have enough time, whose mood darkens when they hear about logging and clearance, send them to Nature’s Lawyer.
Thank you!
