The purpose of this document is to improve the state system of environmental expertise and to align legislation with the country's international obligations.
As part of the project, it is proposed to exclude certain documents from the list required for environmental expertise, including development schemes for industries, international agreements on natural resource use, technical documentation for new equipment and materials, as well as contracts for changing the ownership structure of enterprises. The vague wording "other types of documentation" is also removed, which, according to the authors, will help reduce the level of corruption.
A simplified expertise procedure is introduced for facilities of II category of hazard, which is carried out based on a statement about environmental consequences. Social facilities of III category of hazard are completely exempt from the requirement to undergo expertise.
The draft law also establishes clear deadlines for the re-examination of materials: 15 working days for facilities with transboundary impact, 10 days for facilities of I category of hazard, and 5 days for facilities of II and III categories. All documents must be submitted electronically.
The technical regulation clarifies the hazard categories for waste. The first category will include facilities that collect, receive, or process more than 1000 tons of waste per year from external sources. The hazard category for some facilities has been reduced from II to III.
According to the ministry, these changes take into account the requirements of the Aarhus Convention, to which Kyrgyzstan acceded in 2001, as well as the UNECE Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context. The experience of implementing a differentiated approach to environmental expertise in the European Union, Kazakhstan, and Georgia was used in the development of the document.
The existing law "On Environmental Expertise" was adopted in 1999. In the summer of 2025, amendments were already made to it, which introduced hazard categories for facilities I, II, and III, as well as various deadlines for the review of materials.
