Since November 2019, our SaveEcoBot has been providing all available information about environmental taxes being paid in Ukraine starting from 2016.
Environmental taxes are funds natural monopolies and subsoil users pay to the consolidated budget of Ukraine for damage to the environment. And these taxes have to spend on implementing environmental measures.
We’ve analyzed the payments to the consolidated budget for 2020 and found that—compared to 2019—the total amount of environmental taxes dropped by 6.8%. The amount of environmental taxes for air emissions dropped by as much as 22.2%—if only the air gets purer by such percentage!
Guess how much of the total amount—UAH 5,165,818,000—the companies paid for discharging pollutants into water bodies.
2.8%. TWO POINT EIGHT PERCENT.
Apparently, the rivers are crystal clear in Ukraine. Apparently, the discharges undergo multi-level treatment using state-of-the-art equipment, while we can easily drink municipal water. Or what? Or we have no fewer manipulations than regarding air, to say the least, don’t we?
Obviously, we’ll learn the truth only after the sources of man-made pollution are completely inventoried and environmental information, which still often exists only on paper, becomes public.
Follow the link to learn more about our environmental tax analytics for 2020.
This article is supported by the Environmental Policy and Advocacy Initiative for Ukraine being implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation under the sponsorship of Sweden. It shows the views, conclusions, or recommendations of the authors and doesn’t necessarily coincide with the views of the Government of Sweden. NGO Save Dnipro is solely responsible for the content of this article.