Green Home warns: Marine areas are not protected

"The application of procedures for the establishment of protected areas of various categories, which are defined by the Law on Nature Protection, in practice encounter numerous obstacles, which makes it difficult to establish new protected areas to the detriment of nature," said coordinator Azra Vuković.
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Cijevna (Newspaper), Photo: Montenegro-for.me
Cijevna (Newspaper), Photo: Montenegro-for.me
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.
Ažurirano: 16.01.2016. 12:37h

Montenegro is the only Mediterranean country that does not have a protected area at sea, even though a Protection Study for Platamune has been done.

This was warned by the non-governmental organization Green Home, pointing out that the processes of establishing protected areas on Solana, Šaška Lake and Cijevna Canyon have been going on for several years and have not yet been completed.

"The application of procedures for the establishment of protected areas of various categories, which are defined by the Law on Nature Protection, in practice encounter numerous obstacles, which makes it difficult to establish new protected areas to the detriment of nature," said coordinator Azra Vuković.

She stated that obstacles are encountered from the very submission of the initiative, i.e. the Protection Study, which for areas of local importance must be submitted by the competent local self-government body.

"In practice, we have situations where, regardless of the fact that a certain area is provided for in the planning documentation for protection, local governments very often do not have much understanding or capacity to submit initiatives, and initiate and monitor this process. In local self-governments, there is also a certain fear that the establishment of protected areas will make it impossible to realize some other projects, which means that these processes do not even want to start".

Vuković stated that even in situations where an initiative for the preparation of the Study is submitted, some of the next steps, which involve obtaining money, documentation or data that must come from the local level, are missing.

"The law should have made it possible for other legal or natural persons to initiate the process of preparing the study, and in this way it would have been possible to create an expert basis that would provide further guidelines. According to the same law, the Study can be prepared by the administrative body, which in this case is the Environmental Protection Agency".

Although, as stated by Vuković, funds for the preparation of studies should be part of the budget, that is, of local governments, the lack is a big problem. "So, for example, the initiative to declare the Cijevna canyon a protected area was launched in 2009, and the Protection Study was prepared in 2015, which is an extremely long period..."

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