Yugoslavia and the Aarhus Convention

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,

I have a pleasure to address myself to this conference but I also have a difficult duty to present you brief insight to complexity of Yugoslavian crisis, its attitude to contemporary European development policy and circumstances that define such attitude.

Public participation in decision-making process is crucial for contemporary development of civil society, particularly if the environment is considered as integral part of overall human activities. Democratic changes in CEE countries, and especially in Balkan region, open a whole scale of new temptations and challenges that are to be carefully managed. Public Participation (and Aarhus Convention, as the main framework for its implementation) is like a bridge to democracy over troubled water of changes.

Aarhus Convention was created as a result of political will of all signatories for making significant step forward to contemporary social development taking in consideration, above all, environment and its vulnerability. Apart from the very positive message Convention has, there are certain constrains raised from different interest of the stakeholders in process. Convention is compromise that has loose ends, therefore, its early implementation experiences are very important for proving its value in practice but also for seeking the alternatives.

Unfortunately, as you may know, Yugoslavia has not been participating Aarhus process and was not present on the Aarhus Conference, neither. The reasons are international sanctions against actual Yugoslavian regime and ban for Yugoslavian governmental officials on almost all international intergovernmental processes and meetings. 

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has still not ratified major international treaties with provisions on access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice. Yugoslavia has only ratified the Universal Convention of Human Rights of 1948, but recently work on the adoption and ratification of international treaties in the sphere of environmental protection has been somehow intensified.

Additional obstacle is that we have, practically,  three legal systems that are not synchronized enough and even contrary in some cases; federal and two republican laws ( Serbian and Monte Negrian ). Furthermore, many of the penalties set forth in the legislation are not tough enough to encourage compliance with the law. Although some legal solutions are very good, contemporary and even more restrictive ( in the positive way ) than international standards, since being ignored, their value is annulled.

Account of Public Comments

In general, there is no requirement to formally take into account public input in decision-making.

Mechanisms to Influence Decision making - Lobby Mechanisms  

There is no law regulating activity of lobbyists. Lobbying is not formally established and exists rarely in practice and hardly, if ever, on the local level.

Capacity Building

There is no training on public participation for governmental officials provided by the government, but there are some training sessions organized by private agencies and NGOs.

EIA

There are no proper opportunities for involvement of owners, users and the local community in the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure.

Access to Environmental Information

There is no specific law on access and provision of environmental information. Furthermore, the new Republic Law on Public Information highly degrades basic civil rights and rights to access to environmental information, and was tailored to be additional tool for repression over independent media.

 

Yugoslavia is, at the moment, country with the high level of institutional, economical and social disintegration. Consequences and overall poverty are visible everywhere and, of course, on the environment as well. For over 10 years period, we had permanent social and economical destruction and, from the last year, country was physically destroyed after 79 days of intense and devastating bombing. There are more than one reason for such history of events. The main certainly is incompetent and deeply corrupted government but also very much inappropriate attitude of international community against Yugoslavian crisis. Now we have the situation that country itself is incapable to solve all those problems alone, and the problems are influencing the whole Region. Furthermore, Yugoslavia is nor even involved in Stability Pact for the SEE countries. Since ever, environmental issues have been neglected in Yugoslavia and, during last two years, while having environmental catastrophe, even heavily abused for the political purposes: either for gaining political goals or to abolish ignorance, incompetence or uneasiness to help.

It is very difficult to discuss valid implementation of any international legal document when even local regulations are violated.

However, even in such disturbed social and economical pattern, there are obvious needs for basic changes in decision making and planning activities. This particularly on broad, social layer and not through political process only. Many political actors are present on the political scene in Yugoslavia but none of them, at the moment, has consistent, firm and long term political programme that would also take in consideration contemporary approach to civil development by engaging public outside election process and not only in it. This is why NGO role is even more difficult and NGOs are more responsible than in any other country in the Region. The NGOs, although heavily affected by poverty, lack of capacities and lack of funds,  are to bare heavy load of overall changes and to place initiatives for those changes. This can be a disguised trap and threat since such broad social engagement may force out political meaning of NGO work and may recognize their efforts as part of some political programme. This must be avoided since being very dangerous and also limitation factor as well. In unstable political situations, such as we have in Yugoslavia, repression is very intense against political opponents to actual regime and identifying NGO work as bare political activity, is very dangerous.

It is not possible to talk about implementation of Aarhus Convention in Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia is not among the signatories. In this respect, we can talk only about reflections of the Convention and, more or less, spontaneous initiatives from the governmental administration, but not being part of official policy. Still, the only organized activities are coming from the NGO sector which was participating preparatory process and was present at the convention.

The first step was made in 1998 when REC organized meeting of the NGOs and governmental representatives in aim to define common stand and strategy for the Aarhus Conference. This initiative was not fully successful since Yugoslavian government was not invited to the Conference and Yugoslav official refused to take unofficial part in it, what was offered from NGOs involved in the process. On the other hand, response of Yugoslavian NGOs was weaker than expected, thus those present on the parallel NGO conference in Aarhus and on the ministerial conference had even harder task in participating and transferring information afterwards. Next meeting, also organized by REC, was dedicated to early implementation of the Aarhus Convention in Yugoslavia. NGOs were seeking for the cooperative action on accession, ratification and the soonest implementation of the Convention. This process has to take some time, thus it must begin early.

Bad practice examples

During the last year's bombing of Yugoslavia, no information on devastating consequences were on public disposal. Government, although informed, refused to disclose information on spelt chemicals, released poisoning materials or depleted uranium. The same happened this year when accidents on Tisa river occurred. We were better informed from the, for example, Hungarian sources that from the Yugoslav officials, on levels of pollution and  procedures what to be done in aim to prevent grater damage to environment and health. In both cases real reasons of not disclosing information were ignorance, incompetence and, above all, political effect. Any government in the world is there to manage some community thus to prevent accidents or to offer and apply solutions afterwards. Pointing out to a problem would lead to the expectations of proper solution which might be dislocation of endangered citizens, obtaining a new jobs for them, if the area and soil are so polluted that cannot be used for growing crops or bare living, and complex measurements for maintaining damage. This was (is) not possible for the existing authorities and so they were quiet – if there is no proble, then no solution is needed and no additional headache or fear for political consequences are to be suffered.

Good practice examples

In spite of all, there are several examples of good practice initiatives and projects that are very beginning of and are to define benchmarks for the implementing process. Two cities in Yugoslavia started LEAPs – Subotica and Kotor. REC launched programme on public participation and first round is finished with few very interesting projects done on the local level with cooperation between local authorities and NGOs. GREEN TABLE exercised early steps in introducing public participation on the local level, project »Vracar 2000 – Create your future« done with the cooperation of local authority of this urban Belgrade commune. In three cities ( Zrenjanin, Sombor, Lucani ) a »green chair« has been set up in local parliaments for the representatives of local environmental NGOs. Within the project »Public Relation«, Environmental movement IBAR set up EKO-phone. This was a first step in promoting public participation in decision making process. The feedback from the concerned citizens was very good, other local NGOs wanted to get involved in the process and local authority was informed on the project results.  Local independent media were more engaged in dissemination of environmental information. There has been several campaigns, advocating for environmental issues. For example, GREEN TABLE and local NGO launched an successful, international campaign to stop setting up nuclear waste dump in the place Gabrovnica, near Yugoslav-Bulgarian border in the natural protected area on Stara Planina Mountain. In Danube River protection programme, but also in projects regarding environmental accident on the Tisa river, many Yugoslav NGOs were actively involved, supported also by REC, for maintaining the damage; from information dissemination, legal protection of citizens up to projects of river cleansing. There has been a numerous activities performed, round tables and leaflets published in aim to help endangered people and nature. Of course, leaflets and Internet are powerful tools accessible for the NGOs as well and they are used more and more every day, especially in obtaining proper access to information.  

What is to be done

The signing of the Convention has been a turning point for Central and Eastern Europe in the process of transition. The Aarhus Convention is a unique international legal instrument which can help to harmonize legislation and practice in the field of public participating, access to information and access to justice in a comprehensive way, in the UNECE region, and this way also in Central and Eastern Europe. The Convention will enter in force in some time, but implementation of the provisions of the Convention can accelerate the political process leading to the actual ratification. Besides the standards of the Convention, the best practices on public participation should be also promoted.  

In respect to this, following must be done, and particularly in third sector, to obtain advantage:

In order for public participation to be most effective in environmental decision-making, a number of changes in legislation harmonization between our laws and international legislation must occur as well reinforcement of their implementation.

 

We sincerely hope that such changes are possible. In this respect, we believe that importance of the third sector in Yugoslavia must be recognized and their efforts fully supported by international community, as the only factor that could carry the way out of deep Yugoslavian crisis.

 

Thank you for your attention!

 

Struga, Macedonia, 29.05.2000