Below is the speech of the chairman of  APA concerning  priorities at the Agency of Protected Areas.  This  speech  was made at the kick-off conference of the EU Twining Project.

Dear Ladies, Dear Gentlemen,

My name is Rati Japaridze and I am the newly-appointed head of the Protected Areas Agency. In my speech, I would like to give a brief overview of what has been happening in our sector for the last few years and what the future plans of our agency are.

After having worked for various international and financial organizations, in 2005 I decided to do something that was somewhat different from what I had been doing before. I accepted a position at the Georgian Ministry of Environment where I was tasked with the responsibility for administering the Global Environment Fund grant. This job that started as a mere challenge for me to prove my skills as a manager actually got me so much involved in the PA sphere that soon I decided to remain in this sector for good. I am pretty confident that I made the right choice.

Working in protected areas is a dream job for someone who appreciates picturesque landscapes, pursues adventures, and is fond of nature and biodiversity. Having an opportunity to change things in this field to the positive is a very serious undertaking and I have decided to be the one with APA team who will contribute to protecting the ecosystems of my country, which is rich in its biodiversity. In order to change things, one needs to assess properly the problems, recognize the accomplishments, engage in consultation with all the stakeholders and find the golden medium between protecting the environment, sustainable use of resources and the need for development.

Quite a few things have changed since the distant 2005 when I first learned about the PA sector. It would not be fair not to point out the many positive changes that were made during the tenure of the previous administration and I will name a few:

 

• Poaching / Illegal Logging --

uncontrolled poaching incidents involving public officials and state-owned helicopters and the cases of illegal logging have been practically eliminated;

 

 • Corruption –

effective enforcement procedures as well as staff overhaul stimulated the decrease of corruption;

 

• Funding –

the public budget support of the PA agency has increased ninefold as compared to 2005 and today we are more or less able to offer competitive salaries (unfortunately only to the Central Administration staff);

 

• Donors --

the donors have become quite active by contributing towards the capacity building of PA staff and also to infrastructure projects.These are the praiseworthy achievements that I commend and recognize. However, my team and I don’t want to stop at what has been achieved and we are certainly looking forward to new challenges. The challenges that we expect to overcome are quite a few and I would like only to draw your attention to some of them so that you have an understanding of our priorities in the course of my tenure as a chairman. 

 

• Preservation of Ecosystems and Biodiversity --

 It goes without saying that building up tourist infrastructure and luring in tourists from all around the world is great. However it must clearly and unequivocally be stated that the purpose for setting up a protected area is different. The key purpose of protected areas is not to generate fiscal revenues from tourism! The main idea is to preserve our biodiversity and ecosystems and this must be a key statement, meaning that a lot of PA sites that are not able to generate revenues must be preserved. We must direct our efforts towards better informing the population of the threats to biodiversity and its social/economic values and services. These non-tourist sites often have to ensure the viability of critical ecoprocesses and offer the most important ecoservices to the local population, such as fresh air, potable water and protection from erosion and landslide control. We recognize that actions directed towards preservation of non-tourist sites often involve financial and sometimes substantial outlays and we have to look for innovative ways to secure funding.

 

• Funding – Yes! and indeed, money makes the world go round! The funding problems that Georgia faced at the time I joined the sector were a hot issue. It is still an issue today and it is quite a big issue. While the financing of the Agency has increased nine times as compared to 2005, there is still a very long way to go before the financing matches the needs of the sector. Therefore any joint project in the area of protected areas is definitely a huge respite and benefit for our agency and of course for Georgia's ecosystems. I call on the donors even for more active collaboration. 

 

• Increase of PA Territory Coverage--We expect the establishment of Khevsureti PA within the next one year, thus bringing up the total area of PAs up to 8%. We further intend to set up additional PAs in line with obligations assumed through CBD that provides an increase of protected territories area up to 17%. 

 

• Decentralization --For the time being we have a heavily centralized management structure by which PA administrations are strictly subordinated to the APA central office. While the set up of such a structure might have had some justification in 2007, we now believe that APA needs to make practical steps towards decentralization. There is no need for the purchase of a simple item such a light bulb to be done through the Central Office. At the initial stage we intend to launch a pilot project at Borjomi PA by which we intend to allocate fixed budgets to the PA territorial unit thus giving it a chance to make decisions by itself; gradually we intend to encompass the remaining PAs. 

 

• Landscape Ecological Corridor –

 While Georgia set up several protected areas countrywide, these territories are not connected through Landscape Ecological corridors. We need to do our best through the planning process to make sure that protected areas throughout Georgia are interconnected.

 

• Public Participation and Involvement in Decision-making -- 

This area requires further improvement and I regard it as the weakest point in the work of the previous APA administration. Unfortunately, some key decisions in the past were often made without public involvement and consultation. There were cases when some of the proposed decisions contradicted the general public opinion. As an example, I would like to remind you about the intention of the previous Government to introduce hunting for the Red List of Threatened species. 

We intend to change the situation towards more active public involvement in the decision-making by creating a consultative council at the first stage at our agency and subsequently at the PAs. The consultative agency will involve major representatives of NGOs as well as academic institutions, the local population and reputable experts who will get complete information on ongoing developments in the sector. We intend to hold regular meetings during which we will hear about these stakeholder concerns and will take appropriate measures in the decision-making. 

 

• Educational and Awareness Raising Activities –

One of the inherent problems that – we, as citizens of this country face, is a lack of ability to admit when something is our own fault. We can always shift the blame to anyone else but us. The widely spread illegal poaching and poor waste management culture is often attributed to somebody else. We need to develop a long-term comprehensive educational and awareness program that will bring results of a sustainable character. The educational campaign that will be implemented at academic institutions shall at the same time be accompanied by the increase of fines for violators and by a very effective enforcement regime.

 

• Species reintroduction activities – 

Georgia has suffered tremendously from illegal poaching. Regretfully, some of the public officials associate their position in the government with the right to violate the law in the form of hunting in strict nature reserves. We must acknowledge that this practice exists, We must unconditionally condemn this practice and We must fight this practice! 

As the same time, we must do all our best to help to increase the number of species that face extinction. One of the ways is to bring the number back is to launch reintroduction activities; in fact, some of the measures have already been implemented. Unfortunately, I cannot boast of a positive outcome. Several animals that have been brought in from abroad, after a lot of efforts, have died because of objective/subjective reasons. We must assess the problem, identify the lessons learned and continue work on further reintroduction of species under threat.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is very briefly a bit about our vision concerning how we plan to work in the future. I tried to keep to the minimum and talk about the key areas of our work so that you did not go to sleep during my presentation and so let me stop here. If there is a desire I would love to have personal meetings and discuss our plans even in more detail.

At the very end I would like to express my satisfaction with the start of the new EU Twinning project, which is expected to promote the cooperation between the contracting parties in the field of the environment. This area of cooperation is very important because it will work on capacity building of the Agency staff for developing and implementing management plans as a main tool for nature conservation. This project will be a great opportunity for APA to strengthen the Protected Areas System and implement best practices in management of PAs. I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all the involved stakeholders and parties.

I wish successful and fruitful work to all members of Twinning Project. Thank you for coming and listening to my speech.