The legal status of wetlands
In Georgian environmental legislation wetlands are recognized, first, as a component of the environment: in the law's definitions, the list of environmental information names, alongside air, atmosphere, water, soil, land and landscape, also the wetland, the coastal zone and the marine area. This simple enumeration carries great legal weight: what is a component of the environment falls under the state's informational and protective interest, and any impact upon it becomes the subject of environmental assessment and control.
Second, wetlands are a separate subject of the protection of natural ecosystems: under the law, protection extends, inter alia, to the sea coastal zone; wetlands, spring heads, the sources of reservoirs and rivers, glaciers and caves; subalpine and floodplain forests; valuable forest massifs; green zone forests; sanitary protection zones and territories. The appearance of wetlands in this list means that the legislator recognizes them as independent objects of immediate protection, and not as subjects awaiting infrastructure development.
The aim of protection and the general conditions
Natural ecosystems, landscapes and territories must be protected from pollution, violation, damage, degradation, exhaustion and destruction. These six types of threat form the framework by which the law assesses any impact: if an action causes the pollution, violation or degradation of a wetland, it already contradicts the aim of the law.
Any activity related to the use and management of natural ecosystems, landscapes and territories, and the regime of their management, is carried out taking into account environmental protection norms and requirements. Issues related to use and management — including land-use planning and zoning — are determined by Georgian legislation. For a wetland this means that any plan to develop or cover it must first be assessed in the environmental context and only then in the rules of land use. When deciding on a wetland, three documentary contours must be read simultaneously: the act on the territory's protection status, the environmental assessment documentation and the land-use planning materials — their intersection creates the legal basis whose absence later costs the project dearly.