“De” centralization of natural resources and environmental governance in Armenia

Abstract

Since the adoption of its 1995 Constitution, local self-governance has been central to Armenia’s democratic development. Yet, over the years, municipal governance has faced legitimacy challenges and low performance. In response, the central government amalgamated 915 local communities into 64, claiming that larger communities would have greater opportunities for natural resource conservation and benefit-sharing, thereby receiving additional means to address inefficiencies in public service delivery. Existing scholarship largely confirms the positive socio-economic outcomes of environmental decentralization. However, the literature highlights that the key to effective decentralization lies in a clear, transparent, and well-resourced transfer of responsibilities, rather than merely amalgamation reform. Against such background, this paper assesses the scope and the extent of environmental decentralization in Armenia and contemplates whether amalgamation reform, under the current scope of decentralization, increased local communities’ opportunities for environmental conservation and natural resources use. The findings suggest that environmental decentralization is happening to a limited extent in Armenia. Not only are local authorities granted a restricted scope of legal responsibilities, only 41 % of those responsibilities are implemented. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that amalgamation reform only affected the size of the communities but had no observable impact on improving environment conservation or resource utilization opportunities for local communities.