The Legal Status of Wetlands
In the environmental protection law, wetlands are defined as separately named objects subject to protection: together with natural ecosystems, landscapes and territories, protection extends to the sea coastal zone, wetlands, spring heads, the sources of reservoirs and rivers, glaciers and caves. The wetland stands among the first-rank objects named outright — and this determines the entire regime of its use.
The Purpose of Protection and the Regime
Natural ecosystems, landscapes and territories must be protected from pollution, disturbance, damage, degradation, depletion and destruction. Any activity connected with them, and their management regime, is carried out with regard to environmental protection norms and requirements, while the questions of use and management — including land-use planning and zoning — are determined by the legislation of Georgia.
Load Norms and Licensed Use
The use of a wetland is bounded by the system of environmental-load norms: in using ecosystems, maximum admissible load norms are established, embracing quotas for the use of natural resources — under the principles of sustainable development, at the state level; quotas for individual types are established at regional and local levels. The ministry elaborates the norms once every 5 years. For a wetland this means that its development — drainage, ploughing or any other intervention — is impermissible beyond the established load.
Directly connected with the wetland ecosystem is the norm on the protection of wild plants and animals: for the self-reproduction of their resources and the maintenance of biodiversity, their removal from the environment is strictly limited and subject to licensing — except for the grant of the right to prepare timber as a result of an auction held by the forest management organ under the Forest Code. Any action that may harm the world of wild plants and animals, their habitat, breeding areas and migration routes is prohibited. Impact on a wetland’s biodiversity must be assessed precisely within this double frame — the load norms and the licensing limit.
What These Norms Do Not Contain
These norms do not define an inventory of individual wetlands or their boundaries — the detailed regulation of that sphere belongs to other legislation. Nor are concrete quota figures here — they are established by statute. For a decision connected with a concrete wetland, the current norms and licensing requirements must be verified.