The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection has published the outcomes of the public consultations of the draft Environmental Code of the Republic of Belarus, which took place from September 11 to 21, 2025, on the Legal Forum of Belarus. According to Ecohome, the consultations did not comply with current legal requirements.
The draft Environmental Code contains, inter alia, provisions regulating relations related to environmentally hazardous activities. In particular, it updates the conceptual framework, including the definition of “environmentally hazardous activity,” establishes criteria for classifying economic activities as such (Annex 1), and regulates related issues such as the establishment of environmental protection units within enterprises (Art. 125), local environmental monitoring (Art. 155), and liability and compensation for environmental damage (Art. 342).
Thus, the public discussion of the draft Code (or its separate parts) should have been conducted in accordance with the provisions of clause 2.1 of the Regulation*, namely over a period of 30 days and with the publication of a notification on the official website of the Ministry of Natural Environment.
Despite these legal provisions, the Ministry of Environment did not submit the draft Environmental Code (approximately 500 pages long) for a 30-day public consultations. Instead, it was published only on the Legal Forum website for a period of just 10 days. No announcement about the public discussion on the draft Environmental Code was posted on the Ministry of the Environment’s official website.
In 2025, the Ministry of Environment established a Working Group to draft the Environmental Code; however, no representatives of non-governmental organizations were included. The draft was also presented for discussion to the Public Council for Entrepreneurship Development, which includes representatives of business, government bodies and NGOs. At the same time, the draft was not consulted to Public Environmental Council, which includes NGO representatives, and there is no information on it’s website for 2025 about any council meetings being held.
The text of Environmental Code draft was published on the Legal Forum just in Russian; no Belarusian language version of the document was available.
Thus, the public hearing proceeding violates both national legislation and the provisions of the Aarhus Convention (to which Belarus ceased to be a party in 2022) in terms of ensuring adequate and effective public participation. Neither general public no civil society organizations were no involved properly into the consultation process, also the timeframe was not insufficient for such a large and significant legal act.
The Code consolidates provisions of 8 laws and 3 presidential decrees, unifying terminology and eliminating issues related to the hierarchy of legal acts. At the same time, legal inconsistencies remain, issuing of secondary legislation remains necessary, as well as ideological gap noticed — one that is often reflected in the preambles of international conventions and explains the purpose and reasons for document adoption.
In this case, the document appears to be codification for the sake of codification: 11 legal acts were merged and cross-references removed, but it does not specify the purpose of the Code or outline the state policy vision of environmental protection. It also fails to take into account global trends in recognizing the right to a healthy environment as a human right, as noted by commentators.
According to the summary of results, 65 comments from 14 contributors were received, mainly (but not exclusively) concerning specially protected natural areas, list of objects being subject to state environmental expertize and environmental impact assessment, public hearings of environmentally significant decisions, access to environmental information, waste management, and the draft’s terminology extension and modification. These comments were only partially taken into account.
Key substantive issues were either ignored or “will be further reviewed with the participation of relevant government bodies and organizations,” which allows—but does not guarantee— possible future revisions. Some proposals relate to highly specialized areas where it is important to consider the views of all stakeholders.
Despite the criticisms, the overall impression of the draft Code is rather positive, notwithstanding a number of inconsistencies and gaps also noted by forum commentators. At the same time, taking into account Belarus’s withdrawal from certain environmental conventions, the provisions of the draft Code do not indicate any deterioration of general public opportunities.
After the final approval of the project, the Environmental Code must enter into force 12 months after its publication.
* Regulation on the procedure for organizing and conducting public consultations of environmentally significant decisions, environmental impact assessment reports, and accounting for adopted decisions, approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers No. 458 of June 14, 2016.
