Press releases

UNDP project to help improve air quality monitoring in Belarus

MINSK, 5 June (BelTA) – Belarus will get closer to international standards in the fight against air pollution thanks to the improvement of the physical infrastructure for monitoring air quality, the press service of the UNDP office in Belarus told BelTA.

World Environment Day is marked today. This year it has been dedicated to the problem of air pollution, which is one of the main risks to health and has an effect on the global climate change. Belarus has signed a number of international conventions on transboundary transfer of air pollution, on fighting climate change, and protecting the ozone layer. The projects the UNDP implements in Belarus with financial assistance of the European Union and the Global Environment Facility in partnership with the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry make a significant contribution to fighting air pollution in the country.

Experts are working to allow Belarus to ratify such international agreements as the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers to the Aarhus Convention, protocols on volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants to the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, and the Gothenburg Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone. “If we compare the release of harmful substances into the atmosphere per capita in Belarus and Europe, we will get 130kg per person per annum in Belarus and 80kg in Europe. We have to keep in mind that population density is higher in Europe and respectively the number of sources of emissions is larger. This is why we keep in mind the best practices and standards of our neighbors. Thus, the country’s physical infrastructure for monitoring the quality of atmospheric air will be improved within the framework of one direction of the large-scale program SAQEM,” said Aleksandr Grebenkov, head of the international expert group Human Dynamic. The group works as part of the program Strengthening Air Quality Monitoring and Environmental Management (SAQEM) in Belarus. The program is financed by the European Union and is being implemented in partnership with the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry.

Meanwhile, active work has begun in Belarus to involve the general public in making ecological decisions. The Ecomonitoring project implemented by the UNDP in partnership with the Belarusian Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Ministry is one of the SAQEM components. The project provides for various formats of participation in public ecological monitoring and in the Green Schools movement. As many as 18 pilot sites have been created where equipment will be deployed to monitor the quality of atmospheric air. Thus, even school students in Belarus will be able to get involved in environmental observations.

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