The National Environmental Quality Program (Portuguese acronym: PNQA) was approved in Angola by Presidential Decree 138/20, of 19 May 2020. The act came into force on the same day.
The PNQA implements Law 5/98, of 19 June (the Environment Framework Law), the protection of natural resources and the quality of life of citizens being its overarching principles. The act seeks to drive the implementation of policies to achieve environmental quality, and to prevent and/or minimize negative impacts, in order to avoid future recovery or mitigation costs and ensure sustainability for future generations.
The PNQA is especially aimed at improving the quality of life of Angolan citizens residing in urban, peri-urban and rural areas. It focuses on improving air, water and soil quality, by implementing specific measures, while boosting and falling in step with the different short-, medium- and long-term Government plans and programs.
The PNQA lists several measures for each of those sectors, namely:
AIR
- Collecting and updating information on sources of air emissions and their impact on health and the environment, to prepare a National Emission Plan (Portuguese acronym: PNE)
- Preparing a Presidential Decree to regulate emissions of air pollutants in line with international commitments and defining the air quality standards sought for the country
- Implementing an air quality index for the country’s major cities
- Promoting and adopting Clean Energy and Technology, including as consistent with the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions
- Monitoring the amount of air pollutants
- Measuring the concentration of pollutants in the environment
- Georeferencing the main pollution affected area
- Training air quality technicians
- Collecting information on the sources of contamination of Angola’s main water bodies and relevant impacts on health and the environment
- Implementing a water quality index for water bodies used as general population supply sources
- Promoting public and private water suppliers’ compliance with the water quality index
- Setting a bathing water quality index for rivers and seas
- Recovery of silted or contaminated rivers and lakes
- Establishing drinking water potability standards
- Establishing drinking water microbiological standards
- Establishing turbidity standards for water after filtration or pre-disinfection
- Establishing water potability organoleptic standards
- Establishing drinking water radioactivity standards
- Monitoring water quality parameters
- Training water quality technicians
SOIL
- Identifying degraded areas and areas in the process of desertification to define priority actions
- Raising the awareness of policy makers about the threats of land degradation and desertification
- Promoting crop rotation and livestock grazing techniques
- Developing a program to fight waste liabilities with the Provincial Governments and in accordance with the Strategic Urban Waste Management Plan
- Surveying and controlling pesticides, herbicides used in soils
- Monitoring the soil restoration, rehabilitation and remediation process
- Establishing control measures for the recovery of degraded soil
- Recovering degraded areas
- Inventorying and georeferencing areas undergoing erosive processes
- Implementing a program for the remediation of contaminated or polluted areas
- Recovering silted areas
- Training of soil quality technicians
We foresee that the implementation of the above-listed measures will involve significant changes to the environmental legal framework currently in force, with impact on the activity carried out by public and private entities, especially as regards compliance with new environmental obligations.