Georgia Country Environmental Analysis

During the past decade, Georgia’s
pursuit of economic reforms led to impressive economic
growth, capital inflow, and investments. It helped improve
the business environment and infrastructure, strengthened
public finances, and liberalized trade. Georgia achieved
most of the human development targets of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). This progress did not result,
however, in improved environmental governance or better
management of natural resources. Nowadays, environmental
policies are receiving increasing attention from Georgian
policy and decision makers, recognizing that sustainable
development is about a profound change of policies that
drive systemic transformation of production, consumption,
and behavioral patterns. The list of the country’s
environmental challenges is long. Current policies and
instruments lack the rigor to effectively reduce pressures
on natural assets and protect public health from poor
environmental quality. Georgia does not have a comprehensive
assessment of the cost of inaction to environmental
degradation linking it to economic growth, poverty, and
shared prosperity. This is a central issue on which the
Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is focused. The main
objective of the CEA is to assist the government, civil
society, and development partners of Georgia in identifying
and analyzing critical environmental constraints to
sustainable growth and shared prosperity. Georgia’s Country
Partnership Strategy for 2014-2017 points to lagging public
policies on protecting the environment and natural
resources, against impressive economic growth. It further
highlights several areas needing attention, such as air and
water quality, waste management, land and landscape
management, and nature resource use and protection.