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INECE
AND OECD TEAM TO STRENGTHEN ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE AND
ENFORCEMENT
Paris, France, 3-4 November 2003 - To promote effective
environmental compliance and enforcement, INECE and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
convened over 50 carefully selected high-level practitioners
and experts to advance the development and use of environmental
compliance and enforcement (ECE) indicators. ECE indicators
are proving effective tools for improving performance and
focusing resources to achieve environmental goals in countries
around the world.
The
attending experts represented more than 20 developed, transitional
and developing countries as well as a number of international
organizations, multi-lateral environmental agreement secretariats,
and nongovernmental organizations. This expert workshop,
held at OECD's headquarters in Paris, France 3 - 4 November
2003, generated a lively and insightful discussion and confirmed
the clear mandate for the INECE worldwide project on ECE
indicators.
ECE
indicators are critical to the work that many countries
are undertaking to strengthen their national environmental
compliance and enforcement programs. ECE indicators aid
in monitoring and evaluating ECE programs and how well they
are performing in response to priority environmental problems.
ECE indicators, in general, serve three major purposes:
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ECE indicators assist program management in monitoring
operations of compliance and enforcement programs.
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- ECE
indicators enhance the accountability of environmental
compliance and enforcement programs.
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- ECE
indicators provide a framework to assess the performance
of environmental compliance and enforcement programs.
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Leading
up to the workshop, an international team of experts collaborated
on an extensive workshop background paper. The background
paper established common framework for the workshop's discussion
and dramatically increased the workshop's productivity.
The workshop background paper is available through the INECE
Web page at http://inece.org/IndBackPaper.pdf.
The
workshop featured presentations from developed, transitional
and developing country experts. These presentations provided
experiences with ECE indicators as well as guidance for
further development of ECE indicators. Versions of these
presentations are also available through the INECE Web site
at htttp://www.inece.org/workshop_presentations.html.
The
workshop participants reached a consensus on the need for
additional work, including:
- Development
of reliable, harmonized and easily understandable
indicators;
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- Agreement
on a common set of definitions regarding ECE indicators;
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Augmentation of the good practices identified at
the workshop with additional experiences with ECE
indicators;
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- Publication
of guiding principles for the development and use
of ECE indicators; and
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- Implementation
of pilot projects in several countries of diverse
economic and geographic scope.
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INECE
participants will be working to fill these identified needs.
In
preparation for this workshop, participants were asked to
consider the following questions:
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1
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What
compliance and enforcement indicators are presently
being used in measuring your compliance and enforcement
program? |
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2
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Are
there any on-going programmes that aim to develop more
sophisticated performance indicators? What are the key
elements of such programmes? What data and information
systems do you have available for developing ECE indications? |
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3
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How
are performance indicators being used for management
decision-making in your country? |
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4
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What
stakeholders in your organization are most interested
developing ECE indicators? |
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5
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What
are the main challenges to overcome to begin implementing
ECE indicator pilot projects in your country? What pilot
projects would you like to develop with international
partners? |
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