One year after its adoption, the Law on urban greenery is insufficiently applied. Urgent adoption of the Rulebook on Public Green Spaces, which has been prepared by the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning (MOEPP) is needed.
The Law should soon be adopted, as completion of the current Law on Spatial and Urban Planning, and the basis for the future development of urban plans, said from the political party Demokratska obnova na Makedonija – DOM (Democratic Renewal of Macedonia), on today’s conference “How to Make the Urbanism Green?”.
According to the State Secretary in MOEPP-Ana Petrovska, in the future, within the framework of the Law on Spatial and Urban Planning, where there is pollution, a strategy for the development of greener cities would be essential.
This would include introducing new vegetation or enlargement of the current one, rejuvenating deserted areas and illegal landfills and thus changing the micro-climate in the city to cope with climate change.
The Rulebook provides Detailed Urban Design Plans (DUP) to have basic plans for greenery, and the uniqueness of this Rulebook is the way the future buildings will be planned. Before obtaining a building permit, they will have an obligation to prove that at the level of the construction parcel there is 20 percent urban greenery. This will be determined by appropriate formulas which will prove that the truly envisaged greenery will satisfy the necessary micro-climate needs.
The president of DOM, Maja Morachanin, says the law is being implemented in an inconsistent manner.
According to her, it is also the inspection services responsibility to implement the provisions. Those include: greenery of 25 square meters per inhabitant, obligatory minimum of 20 percent greenery per building, to introduce the Green Cadastre and the protection of the trees , especially the rare ones, larger than 40 centimetres and above 1.3 meters height.
Maja Morachanin gave praise to City Skopje for Creating a Green Cadastre and implementing the new regulatory plans, which will secure a larger percent of green in Municipality Centre.
However, concerning Meta’s question regarding how they would justify Petre Shilegov’s position that from 1.000 mapped life-threatened trees in Skopje, only 187 have been released, the president of DOM said that concerns a serious problem where too many times we face transferring the responsibility from one competent authority to another, and it’s a ‘vicious cycle’ from which we cannot escape.
“That’s why with the new Law on Inspection Supervision, which is already in parliamentary procedure, the responsibility of each of these inspectorates will be precisely given, even though nothing is stopping them from responding to the complaints of the citizens, even if they are not directly responsible,” said Morachanin.
From DOM they remind that even the draft-law on public green spaces which up till now had no political will to be implemented, with a much more improved version, tomorrow will enter the legal procedure. This party has reacted to some of the provisions of the law that are contrary to the Law on Environment, such as that the adoption of DUPs procedure that does not require a strategic environmental impact assessment. That has to be changed.
Some provisions of this law suspended the provision of the Law on urban greenery on public green spaces, but DOM warned that with this, it will allow activities from the urban mafia to enter, as well as opening mines and other projects that have a negative impact on the environment away from the public eye.
