SOME FACTORS INFLUENCING ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT IN THE CSFR 

E. KRUZÍKOVÁ

Executive director, Institute of Environmental Policy, U dvou srpu 2, 150 00 Prague, CSFR

1    ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION AND ITS QUALITY

The quality of environmental legislation significantly influence's environmental legislation, particularly from the point of view of its realistic character, respectively its enforceability. From this perspective it is important to take into account:

- the way how the legislation sets down rights and obligations in this field and environmental standards (limits), quality objectives, etc., which instruments and mechanisms of environmental enforcement the legislation provides.

  1. Since changes in November 1989 and since establishment of environmental authorities in 1990 Czechoslovakia has prepared and approved a new environmental legislation in all fields except for water management.

    New act on the environment setting main principles of environmental protection, basic rights and obligation was approved.

    From one point of view the solution to enact new environmental legislation gave us an advantage to take into account new trends in economic, social and political life of the country. It also allowed us to make an effort to incorporate as much as possible EC environmental requirements into new acts and regulations. from another point of view the legislation was prepared in hurry and in some aspect, especially in emission standards and dead-lines for their accomplishment, it is too ambitious and non realistic.

  2. New environmental legislation provides all instruments and mechanism of environmental enforcement that are known in modern systems:

a. polluter pays principle expressed mainly in the system of charges and fees for pollution and for use of natural resources;

b. some environmental aspects were incorporated into new taxes system that will be in force from January 1, 1993;

c. new legislation empowers environmental authorities to impose fines and other sanction for violation of environmental legislation;

d. it is possible to sue for environmental damage in civil and criminal judicial procedure;

e. as one of the first Central and East European countries Czechoslovakia approved legislation for environmental impact assessment (Act on the Environment - federal, Czech National Council's Act on EIA).

f. environmentalists succeeded to include environmental aspects into privatization act during amendment procedure - how the Act on the large - scale privatization contains one new section ( 6a ) requiring environmental audits to be carried out as a part of privatization process;

In the form of Czech government resolution the Czech republic also basically solved the issue of environmental liability for past damage and their cleaning-up. Regarding the new Czechoslovak environmental legislation it is necessary to say that Czechoslovakia made a big step towards better environmental protection system. As the only country of CEE countries Czechoslovakia succeeded to create new and relatively well coordinated and clear set of environmental acts and regulation. We also created a new structure of environmental authorities on all levels of State Administration, including quite powerful Inspection (Czech and Slovak).

As mentioned under I.1. we did not manage to accomplish enforceability of this legislation sometimes. Not only in the sphere of limits and dead-lines there are lacks. Also charged and fines should be higher to properly stimulate ecological behavior of polluters.

There are some problems with environmental damage and ecological damage (defined as the loss of ecological functions of ecosystems in the Act on the Environment). It is not easy to express what is an environmental damage, to distinguish different extent of the damage (mainly in criminal procedure) and to express and "count" ecological damage. The experience of other countries and of the EC would be highly helpful in this field.

On the lower level (mainly districts and communities) professional skills are not sufficient for powers that were given to environmental authorities at these levels.

These shortly described problems show that the environmental enforcement is not always easy. The main reason of this situation is that before and during drafting the now legislation practically no environmental enforcement system and policy existed.

New acts were being prepared often without even proper economic analysis and assessment of economic consequences of new legislation.

2    PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

  1. Prerequisite for public participation environmental awareness based on access to information about the state of the environment, its reasons and consequences. Information makes people aware of the current situation and enables general public to be a partner of state bodies, to support or to push, challenge state actions.

  2. Czechoslovak legislation gives citizens right to in time, true, objective information about environment (Fundamental list of Rights and Duties, Act on the Environment, Act on Air, Act on Nature Conversation).

    Unfortunately no mechanism and exact way how to implement this right, how to provide information, when and whom, were set down by the legislation.

  3. Acts on EIA are the first Czechoslovak acts giving general public the right to take part in environmental decision-making.

    We will see after one year at least how this instruments works and what are the problems.

  4. It is not easy now to involve the general public into environmental decision-making.

    Environmental protection does not belong among priorities of citizens, today. Since the beginning of 1990 the importance of this issue in the awareness of people has significantly decreased.

  5. In comparison with pre-revolution" time environmental NGO's are not well organized, they are scattered and not very willing to cooperate with each other. However, new environmental non-governmental institution are being created. Hopefully they will begin to play some role in environmental policy. Especially those that are oriented towards transition of the society to sustainability.

3    CONCLUSIONS

  1. It is necessary to examine the efficiency of new environmental legislation, problems of its enforcement; to find lacks, insufficiencies laying inside and also outside environmental legislation.

  2. On the basis of results we must establish an efficient enforcement system and policy, realistic and enforceable, based on broad participation of state authorities, judicial institutions, business and general public.