TEHRAN – Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei sent a letter to the heads of three branches of government on Tuesday declaring the general guidelines on environmental issues.

The policies have been adopted by consulting the Expediency Council.

Following is a snippet of the policies:

- Creating an integrated national system of the environment.

- Reforming environmental conditions in order to respect the intergenerational rights and provide a healthy environment for the society.

- Preventing the spread of various types of contaminations and criminalizing damage to the environment and punishing those who contaminate and damage the environment and obliging them to pay for it.

- Monitoring and controlling causes and factors that contaminate the weather, water, soil, and also the destructive waves and unfavorable changes in the weather and obliging observation of the standards in development plans.

- Countering threats to the environment such as desertification, drought and haze and increasing knowledge about new environmental phenomena.

- Expanding the green economy while keeping an eye on using clean energies, organic and healthy agricultural products, and rectifying production patterns in various social and economic areas, as well as developing non-fossil fuel in public transportation systems.

- Supporting investments and technologies that are environment-friendly by means such as green tax.

- Promoting and institutionalizing environmental ethics and culture which are based on Islamic-Iranian values and patterns.

- Increasing environmental awareness and knowledge of the people from various walks of life.

NA/PA