INECE e-Dialogue Promotes Good Practices for Identifying Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Indicators

The INECE Secretariat organized an e-dialogue in August and September 2004 with leading experts to discuss the development and use of environmental compliance and enforcement (ECE) indicators.

ECE indicators are a way to help compliance and enforcement stakeholders better measure and manage the impact of their activities.

Participants explored the categories of stakeholder groups who should be consulted in the identification process; provided examples of the purposes of ECE indicators from their countries and organizations; and discussed their experiences identifying and overcoming institutional barriers.

Sixty-two people registered and posted a total of 39 comments over the three-week period of discussion. The participants represent a wide range of professional activities and country locations, including Argentina, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Brazil, Finland, Armenia, UK, Malta, Czech Republic, Morocco, Russia, Australia, the US, Bahrain, Paraguay, Scotland, Republic of Belarus, New Zealand, Zambia, and Egypt. Michael Stahl, Director of the Office of Compliance at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, moderated the discussion.

INECE invites you to visit the Indicators Forum Web page at http://inece.org/forumsindicators.html to access the full discussion summary, as well as background information, guidance questions, and the archived Indicators Bulletin Board.

Costa Rica To Launch Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Indicators Pilot Project To Help Protect Forests

The INECE Secretariat's efforts to promote the use of environmental compliance and enforcement indicators to measure the effectiveness of environmental laws took a giant step forward in October 2004 with the establishment of a forestry indicators pilot project in Costa Rica.

The pilot project was the result of a two-day workshop entitled, "Experts' Meeting: Designing Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Indicators for Costa Rica's Forestry Sector," held in San José, Costa Rica, on 4-5 October 2004.

To organize the workshop, the INECE Secretariat worked with Carolina Mauri of EcoConsulta in Costa Rica and a team graduate students from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The pilot project will target illegal logging activities such as harvesting, non-compliance with permits, transportation, and processing of contraband timber in Costa Rica's central volcanic range. It will begin with a two-month data collection and indicator selection period, followed by six months of analysis, expert review, stakeholder discussion, and the formulation of recommendations.

The goals of the pilot project include fostering cooperation and information sharing among stakeholders, providing meaningful indicators and information for decision makers, identifying mechanisms to improve control of illegal logging, creating an efficient monitoring system, identifying patterns and motives of illegal activities, and publishing the identities of individuals and groups engaged in illegal activities.

Kenneth Markowitz represented the INECE Secretariat as a moderator at the workshop and found that it was a critical step forward in the development and use of ECE indicators to promote environmental enforcement and compliance.

"This first step has resulted in enthusiasm in Costa Rica for an indicators pilot project," Markowitz said. "Key stakeholders from the Environment Ministry, the Prosecutors Office, and the Office of the Comptroller found the project offers an important opportunity to improve the implementation and enforcement of Costa Rica's forestry laws and and were committed to move forward with its development subhect to the availability of resources."

INECE Leads Indicators Workshop at IUCN World Congress

In conjunction with the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law Specialist Group on Enforcement and Compliance, the INECE Secretariat led an indicators workshop at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, in 17-25 November 2004.

The workshop focused on the current state of work on enforcement indicators; explore key issues related to enforcement indicators (e.g., data needed to support robust indicators, strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to indicators); and identify field applications of indicators with special emphasis on the conservation agenda.

Panelists included Guillermo Acuna, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; Anita Akella, Conservation International; Adriana Bianchi, World Bank Institute; Silvia Cappelli, Instituto O Direito por un Planeta Verde, and Maria Eugenia di Paola, Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales.

The World Bank Institute's Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Indicators Project in Latin America
By Adriana Bianchi, Environment and Natural Resources Division, World Bank Institute. Email: abianchi@worldbank.org

The World Bank Institute's Environmental Governance Program is conducting Pilot Projects in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico to assess the usefulness of environmental compliance and enforcement (ECE) indicators that measure and manage compliance and enforcement programs.

This project is part of the on-going collaborative effort within the INECE network to develop effective ECE indicators.

Each country's working team, comprised of technical, economic, and legal experts, is responsible for preparing analytical studies tracing the recent efforts of each country to measure or evaluate the quality of existing ECE indicators, particularly water and air. The objective is to develop a conceptual framework that would place different approaches into context, review lessons learned, identify policy issues that need to be addressed, and explore practical approaches that would lead to improved use and application of effective indicators. In addition, the pilot will make recommendations to enhance capacity for performance assessment of compliance activities, refine procedures for using quantitative and qualitative indicators, and promote the use of indicators for reporting on progress towards sustainable development.

In December 2003, two workshops were delivered in Brazil on "Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Indicators," and "Principles of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement - Practical Applications." Both workshops were organized in collaboration with Law for a Green Planet Institute, the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA), the Association of Brazilian Public Prosecutors, the National Association of Local Governments for the Environment (ANAMA), and the Ministry of Environment. A follow-up working meeting in May 2004 attended by environmental state authorities endorsed the pilot project, and the creation of the Working Group on Development and Implementation on ECE indicators was made public. For more information, please contact Silvia Cappelli, cappelli@portoweb.com.br.

In Argentina, two workshops organized by Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN) were held in May 2004. One was held at the Secretariat of Environment to discuss the challenges facing authorities in developing and using results-based indicators in national environmental compliance and enforcement programs, and how to address constraints. The second was held at the Municipality of Morón to initiate a local pilot activity. The orientation of both workshops was to focus on ECE indicators as tools that can assist policy makers in monitoring operations of their compliance and enforcement programs, and also measure program efficiency and effectiveness. For more information, please contact Maria Eugenia di Paola, medipaola@farn.org.ar.

In Mexico, a workshop discussing key constraints and issues related to environmental compliance and enforcement indicators was held in May 2004. Mexico has made real strides on indicators of environmental compliance and enforcement, including practical applications, revisions and improvements, but at present the program of ICNAs (indicators of compliance with environmental legislation) is not widely used. There are on-going discussions to update the ICNAs program, and this meeting was seen as a timely opportunity to encourage the need to reactivate the ICNAs. The workshop was organized in collaboration with PROFEPA (Office of the Federal Prosecutor for Environmental Protection), SEMARNAT, and CeIBA, an NGO and partner institution. For more information, please contact Antonio Azuela, lacueva@servidor.unam.mx.

A workshop to be held in Santiago, Chile, in December 2004 will bring together the pilot project working teams from the three countries to discuss their findings, challenges, constraints and opportunities leading to specific terms of reference for a proposed program that will include other countries in the region. This workshop is to be co-sponsored by ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America) and the CONAMA (National Environmental Commission of Chile).