The discussion of findings of the draft report “Environmental inspections and compliance assurance in Azerbaijan” took place virtually on 5 October 2023.
Meeting objectives, expected outputs and outcomes
The main objective of this meeting was to present and discuss the findings of the draft report “Environmental inspections and compliance assurance in Azerbaijan” as well as the next steps for the finalisation of the report and for strengthening the environmental compliance assurance system in Azerbaijan.
At this meeting, the OECD Secretariat and participating experts presented the preliminary findings, and the experts from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MENR) and other relevant government agencies from Azerbaijan were invited to provide comments and additional information for the report.
Participants
Participants included officials from Azerbaijan’s MENR and other relevant government institutions, the OECD Secretariat, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.
Background
Since 2019, Azerbaijan has been actively participating in the EU4Environment: Green Economy Programme. This included activities on promoting compliance with environmental regulations.
As part of this work a draft report on “Environmental inspections and compliance assurance in Azerbaijan” was prepared by the OECD based on guidance from the MENR that selected the topic of environmental inspections as a focus of this report since inspections are an indispensable tool for identifying non-compliance and gathering evidence of non-compliance.
This draft report analyses the practice of environmental inspections in the country. It also briefly reviews other key aspects of Azerbaijan’s environmental compliance assurance, such as compliance monitoring, promotion and enforcement of compliance, and provides recommendations for further alignment of these elements with good international practice. The report was prepared based on secondary research as well as information collected through meetings and interviews during 14 – 17 March 2023 in Baku, Azerbaijan.