TEHRAN — We all share the same planet and share environmental challenges to different degrees depending on where we are situated on the Earth.

TEHRAN — We all share the same planet and share environmental challenges to different degrees depending on where we are situated on the Earth.

Some are suffering from prolonged periods of droughts while others are experiencing severe and recurrent flood. More or less all fall victim to these human induced environmental alteration.

Having this in mind in the post-sanctions era Iran has attempted to attract international support to fight these challenges. Iran and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Tehran on Saturday, joining hands to combat environmental challenges that both countries are facing.

Seizing the opportunity of Romanian delegation’s presence in Iran the Tehran Times conducted an interview with Romanian Minister of Environment, Waters and Forests Cristiana Pasca Palmer.

The MOU an opportunity to learn from each other success and failures

“We were very excited that Iran is in an opening stage after the nuclear deal and we incentivized our cooperation,” Pasca said.

“We are excited because I think it’s an opportunity to strengthen our bilateral cooperation and also to learn from each other because Iran is obviously a country with tremendous richness and natural heritage so you have your own experiences in this areas; it’s a good way to start discussing it to see how we can exchange knowledge and learn from each other from our successes and failures as well.”

“That was a great opportunity to come here and today we have signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran on all the issues we discussed such as air quality, sustainable management of environmental resources, biodiversity, green economy and eco-tourism and it was a very good opportunity to learn in more detail about Iran and the challenges Iran is facing on environmental front,” she said, “We not only identified common challenges but also some common approaches to the solutions.”

Possible future cooperation will be discussed in the near future 

Noting that at this stage she can’t give any specific details on the possible future cooperation, the minister explained that “we offered to continue the dialogue on technical levels so I thinks in the following weeks my team will be in touch with the Iranian team and may set up some workshops where they can meet and discuss very completely each and every one of these subject matters and how we can help each other.”

“I think [future cooperation] depends on what is going to be discussed when the two Iranian and Romanian teams meet and decide what kind of cooperation is necessary,” she said, adding, “As I said we have a lot of expertise for forest sustainable management, water management and air quality but it all depends on what’s going to be discussed between the teams and after that we can set specific targets and measures.”

“The memorandum of understanding is a general framework of agreement of areas which we want to collaborate and so far we have an agreement that we will open a dialogue in cooperation in certain areas and obviously it has to be taken to a technical level,” she added. 

Environmental challenges

“We have many challenges in our country,” said Pasca. “Romania is a country very rich in nature and one of the countries with the richest biodiversity in Europe as 27 percent of the country is covered by forests and Romania has the last remaining virgin forest in Europe. It’s a country very diverse in landscapes which is a blessing but also a responsibility to take care of it.”

“Almost over the last two decades we have had some challenges on the forest management such as illegal logging and some corruptions in water management,” she said. “We are now experiencing more frequent severe flooding because of the climate change and because some of the forests are cut on the mountain slopes and when it rains heavily we have floods immediately.”

She went on to say, “In the area of industrial pollution we are doing better because in fact the heavy polluting industries that we had until 1990s have progressively phased out, so that also resulted in an improvement of environmental factors.”

“In several cities we are fighting air pollution because the number of cars has increased tremendously in recent years; that of course brings a lot of comfort to the people but on the other hand it also brings pollution, so there are many challenges but I think we succeeded in putting in place not only good regulations but also to implement some of these regulations successfully.”

Pasca added, “As Romania has been a member of European Union for almost 10 years we agreed to a treaty [based on which] we have to comply with EU environmental regulations which is very strict, so that is good for us because it somehow forces us in a way to take serious measures.”

“We offered to continue the dialogue on technical levels so I thinks in the following weeks my team will be in touch with the Iranian team and may set up some workshops where they can meet and discuss very completely each and every one of these subject matters and how we can help each other.”

Forest a matter of national security in Romania 

In the area forests Romania is now having quite an elaborate legislation, the minister pointed out.

She added, “We have forest law and because the forests are such an important natural resources the country decided to make it a matter of national security, therefore the forests are also overseen by the national security law.

“We have developed very stringent regulations and penalties for people who are dealing with illegal logging which was a bit of a problem for a good number of years; the police is very involved in controlling that the law is being implemented and we can put people to jail if we catch them destroying the forest in a certain way and in the meantime we are replanting some of the forests.”

Modern technology is the fast track to stop illegal logging

“We are also using informatics technology to develop a very sophisticated system to trace every single piece of a tree from the moment it is cut in the forest all the way to the factory,” she highlighted.

She further explained, “In Romania we have about 6.9 million hectares of forests half of which is owned by the state and the other half is owned privately by the people, companies, or local authorities so people are very sensitive to the forests.”

“So we’ve developed a mobile app that every citizen of Romania can google it and download it and then start tracking [illegal logging themselves, for instance] if they are on the road and see a truck with logs they can go into the application to find out if the logs are legal or illegal and if they are illegal they can call the police.”

Encouraging ecotourism benefiting local communities

“We have about 1,500 protected areas of different status in Romania and about 22 national parks. So this is a very rich capital that has to be properly managed.

“We are pushing for support for community development such as ecotourism in the national parks: It’s beautiful to spend your holidays there and the local communities can sell their products to the tourists which can bring some economic and social benefits to them as well.

“And that’s very important because we want to try to help the young generation to have [job] opportunities [here] or otherwise they might have the tendency to leave the country and look for opportunities somewhere else.”

Granting subsidies to shift to low-emission vehicles

The Romanian minister also explained that by granting the car owners subsidies with the money provided by the state they are trying to help people change their cars to the cars which are less polluting.

“So we give a subsidy and encourage people to bring their old cars, recycle them and buy new cars which are less polluting,” she said, adding, “On the other hand we give people subsidies to purchase electric hybrid cars for a transition out of this fossil fuel-based mobility.”

She also said “We encourage cycling in towns and we have money allocated to biking infrastructure, although it’s still in initial stages; it’s a lot compared to what we used to have in the past.”

She added, “We have a national network to monitor the air quality so in each 42 counties we have a local environmental protection agency and they have the responsibility of monitoring quality of the air and all the data will be sent to the central headquarters.”

European Union disciplinary measures

“Again we have EU air quality directive. The way things are working with the EU is that we have all these regulations and targets that we have to fulfill and if we fail will be penalized by the EU.”

Developing green economy

“This year we launched a financing program to help develop eco-businesses and eco-innovations to help waste management and we also have a budget line for city societies and NGOs that we encourage very much to develop environmental awareness [among public],” the minister noted.

Dams maybe removed

“In 30 to 40 years we built a lot of dams to control the rivers but what we saw in times is that the rivers have their own natural way, so right now our experts are assessing the condition in some areas to possibly remove the dams and reestablish the natural ecosystem which provides better condition for flood management,” she noted.

We must be more efficient

“Unless we recognize that environment has to be the mainstream in whatever we do and unless we change our behavior as consumers we will have a major problem because we will have almost 9 billion people on this planet by 2050 and if we all want to have a decent life the plant won’t have the capacity to support that, so we need to learn to use the resources more efficiently and use water resources more efficiently and to cope with the climate change,” she highlighted.