Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 20:13–22.

ATTILA MESKÓ

Transition to Sustainability

Sustainability requires the shaping of a new relationship between humanity and nature. Sustainability can be achieved if human needs can be ensured in the present, at the same time the environment and natural resources can be preserved for future generations.

The concept of sustainability

Some decades ago everybody, the media, politicians, decision-makers, but even representatives of the scientific community, spoke about sustainable development. The expression is still used by many, though at present the world does not function that way, in a sustainable manner. To put it differently: the way we live, produce and consume, cannot be continued in the long run. Population growth cannot be sustained, neither the rate of using up resources, nor the growth of economic inequalities and the degradation of the environment.

One of the most important elements of sustainability is the protection of the environment in a broader sense: the protection of the systems and resources of nature.

New scientific knowledge and technologies based on knowledge are necessary and significant elements of the achievement of sustainability. Scientific and technical progress promises new resources of energy, a more efficient industry and agriculture, better quality products, the improvement of our health and environment-friendly technologies. Progress in science, technology and health care, provided it is supported by political will and international cooperation of the countries of the world and corroborated by their social and economic policies, may be a significant step towards a sustainable world in the next century.

At the same time science also offers tools for measuring how far we have approached sustainability. Instead of the currently used measures, such as GDP, GNP and others, or in addition to them indices characteristic of approximating sustainability should be applied.

Challenges of population explosion

In the next century food, housing, education, teaching and employment (work) should be guaranteed for many more people. In 2000 the population of the Earth reached 6 thousand million. By 2050 a population of almost 9 thousand million is expected, which seems to stabilise around 9 to 10 thousand million by the end of the century. In 2050 80% of the population will live in developing countries. The rate of growth depends on the size of families, on family planning, and on the ability of later generations to actually implement the desirable changes that are decided upon. Policies slowing down population growth and programmes supporting it are of primary importance.

For the first time in history more than half of the population of the world live and work in cities. In the next one hundred years urban population may exceed 4 thousand million. It is equivalent to the need for building 400 cities of the size of Shanghai or Jakarta in the next century. It will be an enormous task to provide housing, jobs, water, food, transport, health care and other services for the new urban population.

At present the number of people suffering from famine is estimated at 800 million. Presumably this figure will also increase with population growth. Income differences keep on increasing all over the world and if there are to be no rigorous measures taken for its correction, the trend may persist. The global growth of the production of food and other goods may mitigate famine and poverty, but by itself it does not offer a solution. A new, comprehensive policy and programmes are needed.

Preservation of the environment and natural resources

Our planet is kept alive by the physical and biological systems of the Earth such as the atmosphere, soil, the oceans and the biosphere. By now humanity has become capable of changing the environment to such an extent that may even overcome the rate of natural changes. Therefore extreme precaution is necessary.

One of the changes of the composition of the atmosphere, the growth of the quantity of carbon dioxide results in global climatic change with consequences impossible to foresee. The increase of temperature is a fact proven not only by meteorological measurements, but also by the melting of the ice caps on the North and South poles and the withdrawal or total disappearance of glaciers. The ice cap on the North pole is about 40% thinner than it used to be 30 years ago, huge, several thousand square kilometres of icebergs break off from the Antarctic, and almost 2000 glaciers have completely disappeared (melted away) in the Himalayan region during the twentieth century. As the large quantities of fresh water flowing into the Atlantic may rearrange its streams, including the Gulf Stream warming the northwestern part of Europe, certain areas (Europe too!) may significantly cool down. But the conditions of precipitation also change. Precipitation will be much more in some places, and less elsewhere, causing floods and aridity, draught respectively. Both changes may significantly disturb the normal functioning of agriculture. Finally, during the course of climatic change the number and intensity of extraordinary meteorological events may significantly grow: hurricanes, tornadoes, lasting rains can be expected.

Ozone is also a vital component of the atmosphere though it occurs in small quantity. Currently the quantity of ozone in the stratosphere is falling under the influence of halogenated hydrocarbons that catalyse the disintegration of the three-atom ozone. It can also entail consequences that are difficult to foresee on the human health and of the biosphere in a broader sense.

Several vital materials originate from the ecological systems of the Earth, such as: food, building materials, fuel, drugs, and raw materials for industries. Several of their functions are equally important: such as the circulation of water and of other chemical compounds, water purification, flood control, pollination of plants, purification of the atmosphere and others. The diversity of genes, species, and ecosystems itself is valuable. A transition to sustainability can only be envisaged if the condition of ecosystems and species is preserved under the rapidly changing circumstances.

Of the further consequences of human activities here mention should be made only of the extremely rapid growth of wastes, and hazardous chemical and radioactive ones among them. If the 6 thousand million people ‘produced’ such a quantity of waste as it is done by an average American, the entire biosphere would be transformed into garbage within a couple of decades. Other, clean technologies and recycling are needed, wastes should be treated and carefully deposited. We have to shift gradually from surveying damages to prevention.

Innumerable other sources of danger may adversely influence the condition of the environment. Among them there are the natural disasters (beyond the long-term change of climate and the decrease of ozone the consequences of which are difficult to foresee), floods and internal waters, drought, earthquakes, landslides, storms (tornadoes), forest fires. And catastrophes caused by man, such as industrial and agricultural pollution, industrial accidents, accidents occurring during the transportation of hazardous materials and those resulting from improper storage of wastes. Further troubles that are real ones but difficult to classify are the growing health problems (viruses, new strains of bacteria, or due to our way of life) and conflicts (terrorism, organised crime, civil war, war).

We are not adequately prepared for them. We have not reached a stage that would be desirable and where we should be either in scientific foundations, or in surveying and in averting damages (wherever adequate methods are available), and not in regular monitoring.

Limitations of food production

In the next 50 years the demand for food is expected to treble. Its reasons are: population growth, the increase of per capita income and hopefully successful efforts to reduce the malnutrition of the very poor. That significant demand can only be satisfied if there are to be dramatic changes in the production, distribution, accessibility and safety of food.

During the past half century the growth of plant production derived from four interrelated sources such as the growth of cultivated areas, an increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides, an expansion of irrigation and the improvement of high-yielding species. All the four possibilities have their natural limitations, therefore the desirable growth of agricultural production will be far more difficult to assure in the 21st century than it was until recently.

Scientific and technological breakthroughs may, in the long run increase the efficiency of food production, particularly in the area of biotechnology. In addition to the increasing quantity of production the reduction of chemical protection against plant diseases and pests and ecology-based protection may also be expected of biotechnology. As new technologies, such as genetically modified (GM) plants gain ground, there is to be a growing need for a scientifically based study of the possible adverse effects, together with the elaboration of strategies eliminating dangers.

More efficient irrigation systems preserve and maintain the stock of water and help the satisfaction of other, non-agricultural demands. New agricultural techniques requiring less ploughing reduce soil erosion and the loss of water.

A scientifically based classification of cultivated areas into zones, that is precision agriculture may help avoid that natural habitats are turned into destroyed waste lands due to harmful agricultural activities. Processes of improvement that also preserve the diversity of plants and animals enhance the capacity of agriculture to fend off the effects of climatic change or those of other environmental surprises.

Use of water

Fresh water is a renewable source. Drainage after rains, a replenishment of soil water and the streams of near (the surface) waters supplement for the quantities used. Globally the stock of water is big. At the same time water is very unevenly distributed among countries, local springs are either scanty or polluted in several countries.

About one-third of the global population lives in countries where water is not always available. In the developing countries more than one thousand million people have no access to drinking water of reliable quality, and another three thousand million have no water supply of a quality acceptable from the point of public health! Water-related illnesses cause the death of 5 to 10 million people annually, mostly of children and the elderly. In the developing countries the quality of water is deteriorating, particularly in cities due to rapid industrialisation and growing pollution.

Drawing of water from the surface water systems, irrespective of whether it is for agricultural, urban, or industrial purposes, may harm aquatic communities and marine systems. Further on, their quality is degraded by urban sewage water, pollution by industry and agricultural activities as well as by the burning of fossil fuels. Subsequently the degradation of aquatic systems reduces the quantity and quality of water available for human use.

Numerous current technologies may increase a more efficient use of water but before they are applied, or prior to the introduction of new technologies, the elaboration of new strategies of water management is also needed. These strategies have to consider the processes and protection of communities besides the utilisation of arable land and the quality of water. The price of water used for various purposes should be set so that it may promote economizing, reuse and recycling.

Ensuring energy

In the 21st century energy should be ensured at least for 8 thousand million people and meanwhile the health of man as well as the biosphere should be preserved. Currently the majority of energy is supplied by oil, coal, natural gas and wood. Many of the environmental hazards, such as acid rains (affecting agriculture and the economy), air pollution (with serious damages caused to health), and climatic changes are the consequences of the use of coal-based fuels. If the damage caused by the burning of fuel is not built into its price, then presumably fossil fuels will be available at a relatively low price in the coming 50 years.

Several industrial nations have accomplished significant progress in the reduction of local and regional pollution by controlling emission. At the same time local as well as regional pollution is a serious and growing problem in the developing world. As far as global atmospheric changes are concerned there is broad agreement on the need for limiting carbon dioxide emission, as it is also indicated by agreements on the emission of glasshouse gases, but with a few exceptions serious restrictions have not yet been introduced.

Though the methods of energy production not based on fossil fuels do serve the local, regional, or global problems of air pollution, but each of them have different limitations and specific dangers. The available waterpower is already utilised in the industrial countries. Several developing countries plan or build huge dams but the enormous cost, accompanied by adverse environmental effects that are already experienced and the problems of the necessary resettlement of the aboriginal population slow down expansion.

In the industrial countries the building of nuclear power stations has practically stopped. Its reasons are that the investment is very costly, that there are problems of depositing radioactive wastes; that materials suited also for the manufacture of nuclear weapons may reach illicit hands, and there is the issue of nuclear safety.

The renewable resources of energy, such as wind, sun, biomass, are promising ones, but the development of their use, particularly in the light of abundant and cheap fossil fuels, is insufficiently rapid.

In the next century the demand of the growing population of the Earth can only be satisfied if new and more efficient technologies for the production of energy are developed. Further progress is desirable in the effectiveness of the use of water. The introduction of decentralised systems of alternative energy production, namely systems using biomass, solar and wind energy should be promoted everywhere wherever their use is justified. Environmental regulation the introduction of fees and penalties charged for harmful emission is needed by the introduction of cleaner technologies should be helped by demonstrations, by the reduction of their costs and by subsidies.

Problems of health care

The recent decades have brought unprecedented development in the changes of the conditions of health care in the world. In most countries life expectancy has grown by more than 25 years. Yet the poorest peoples of the world still have to shoulder the burden of several, mostly avoidable illnesses and death. They happen to be the consequences of the lack of health-care provision, of poverty and malnutrition. Poverty forces millions of the urban and rural population to live under conditions without the minimum of hygiene, and the lack of clean water and sewage systems is the hotbed of infectious diseases.

In the coming 25 years the health care problems of the entire population of the Earth will approximate those that currently have to be faced by the population of the industrialised countries. Actually decreasing fertility and the growth of the average age of the population make the curing of illnesses of the adult population important, while the proportion of children’s diseases is becoming smaller. Depression, cardiovascular diseases and cancer should be particularly mentioned of illnesses hitting adults. The consumption of drugs and smoking are growing problems too.

In the developing countries it is an urgent task to create a sustainable scientific and medical infrastructure, the employment of researchers and specialist medical doctors.

The role of research and education

In a sustainable world it is decision-making based on the knowledge of facts that is needed. Therefore the global and vigorous development of scientific, engineering and health care capacities is a central element in the strategy on sustainability. Civil organisations, private enterprises, regional and national governments have to work jointly and in cooperatively on the elaboration of tasks and their local-level implementation.

It is desirable that the institutions of research should gain strength all over the world. Radically new solutions, energy-saving clean technologies can be expected only from new ways of thinking, and long-term basic researches. They have to be strengthened and directed to the solution of social problems. Local, national and global institutions should be linked in the interest of efficiency. The strengthening of research relations between academic, governmental and private institutions, and of different scientific disciplines would also enhance efficiency.

In the coming decades the scientific community of the world has to evolve reliable indices that measure how far we have approximated sustainability. Society has to be regularly informed about the results and changes. The major indices will have to characterise the following factors:

1. human needs, the condition of the environmental systems,

2. regional dimensions of environmental vulnerability,

3. locally assessing the types of areas and ecosystems,

4. the extent of progress in such intermediate areas like health, the quality of water and air, and energy efficiency (energy saving).

Development of a global information network

A large amount of knowledge, know-how, skills and experience, allowing for better decision-making, has been accumulating in the world. There is great need however for mechanisms that make the knowledge of an individual, group, company, or nation utilisable by other persons, groups, companies, or nations as well. These mechanisms should increasingly change into cooperation and partnership instead of competition and the older unilateral and one-way assistance.

The scientific community has obtained a unique, hitherto unprecedented chance to reduce the ‘information-gap’ among people by the new information technologies and the appearance of the world wide web. In other countries electronic contacts could or should be created with international assistance. The already existing network makes it possible in theory for anyone to have access to researchers, engineers and medical doctors in some countries. With a further extension of the world wide web a condition should be reached under which people may have access to scientific and technical knowledge or to experts whom they can consult for they the solution of their problems and to the improvement of their quality of life anywhere. At the same time they should have the possibility of communicating their own knowledge, views and needs with others.

During the past years an understanding was reached on interrelated important aims on which an operation that preserves nature could be based. Our consumption and production habits should be altered in order to preserve the health of the environment and the resources. In theory science and technology can ensure the means necessary to the realisation of sustainability for the present and future generations. Existing knowledge should be made available more broadly and more effectively, new knowledge should be obtained by scientific research, and new, clean technologies should be elaborated on the basis of that knowledge. Transition requires an economic and social policy differing from the present one, and for that reason the scientific academies have to cooperate more closely with governments, international organisations and the private sphere in the interest of sustainability. Its realisation can be our hope. This is why we ask of decision- makers and of society to for their support of future research.

Changes of consumer habits

Consumption goes hand in hand with the transformation of matter and energy. In every case when matter or energy is transformed and becomes less usable, or adversely influences the biological and physical systems, sustainability is endangered.

In the second part of the twentieth century the production, making and utilisation of energy and goods grew at a much faster rate than population did. In the developed countries the specific use of matter and energy was reduced, it means that efficiency grew. Full consumption however grew all over the world, in the developed as well as in the developing countries.

Ensuring the need for energy and matter is the greatest difficulty of sustainability. As the demand for matter grows in the developing countries and increasing wealth creates new requirements, it makes new consumer habits possible or at least desirable, those difficulties would be enhanced.

All these support the claim that the efficiency of the utilisation of energy and matter is of extreme importance. In addition to scientists and engineers the joint effort of economic experts and social scientists is needed to alter consumer habits. Science and technology by itself is unable to ensure sustainability, if our consumer habits do not change.

Ability for conflict management

In the twenty-first century the extent of the approximation to stability and security would also influence sustainability. Conflicts may ensue from competition for the acquisition of nourishments, water, information, etc. Access to the necessary resources may be limited, or even made impossible by organised crime, drug trafficking, civil wars, or terrorism. In an extreme case even wars may break out between states. As the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons cannot be excluded, devastation bigger than ever before may also be a result.

Therefore it is necessary to understand how these events, endangering sustainability, can be avoided, or managed, how the stability and normal functioning of institutions can be ensured. Science may significantly promote understanding and cooperation, it may stress the enormity of the cost of conflicts; it may explore and eliminate the sources of conflicts.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 20:23–29.

ISTVÁN LÁNG

Stockholm–Rio de Janeiro–Johannesburg

Stockholm: the first world conference

At the end of the 60s of the twentieth century the United Nations Organization had been ever more frequently dealing with issues of environmental protection. In autumn 1970 UNESCO launched its international research programme entitled “Man and Biosphere” which studied the mutual effects of the eco- systems evolving in the various climatic regions and human activities.

In 1970 the UN General Assembly decided to organise the first world conference on environmental protection in 1972. Its official name was UN Conference on the Human Environment. Sweden accepted to host the Conference that was held between 5 and 16 June 1972 in Stockholm. Since that time 5 June has become the World Environment Day.

Initially the Soviet Union and its allies supported the idea of the Stockholm event. Preparations began in the so-called ‘East-European’ countries. In Hungary the government commissioned the Ministry of Construction and Urban Development to coordinate the related activities. An inter-ministerial committee was set up under the leadership of Deputy Minister Lajos Szilágyi for coordination tasks. I participated in that committee as Deputy Secretary-General of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, representing it. The ‘team of Stockholm’ was being shaped (I was supposed to be a member of it) but ultimately the Hungarian delegation never went to the Stockholm Conference. In fact a diplomatic tangle emerged because the German Democratic Republic was not invited to the event as the GDR was not a member of the UN in those days. In protest the Soviet Union and several of its allies, including Hungary demonstrated by their absence. Later on it proved to have been a big mistake as countries keeping away got into a five-year delay at least in joining international programmes for the protection of the environment.

The attention and interest of domestic scientific circles turned towards the new type of environmental problems already from 1971 onwards. In 1971 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences elaborated a research task on the level of ministries, entitled “Man and the Protection of His Natural Environment”, called “Biosphere Programme” in brief. The research tasks were coordinated by the Botanical Research Institute of HAS (Vácrátót).

In May 1972 (one month before the Stockholm Conference, when we were still sure to participate in that international event), Academician János Szentágothai gave the main talk to the General Assembly of the Academy on “Man and His Environment”.(Magyar Tudomány 1972. No. 6. pp. 350-357.) The presenter discussed the most important environmental problems with extraordinary farsightedness, mentioning among others the impoverishment of the genetic treasure of organisms living on Earth, the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide emission, and the importance of recycling wastes. He proposed a more modest and economical consumption and way of life at a time when the concept of sustainable development as such was unknown. János Szentágothai recognised the new challenges of the new trend in time.

I skipped through the June 1972 issues of the daily paper Népszabadság. The issue published on 1 June stated that the Hungarian delegation remained absent. According to the communiqué of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the principle of universality was violated by hindering the GDR to participate and one of the developed and industrialised countries was discriminated against. In protest Hungary, similarly to the other socialist countries, would not send its delegation to the Stockholm Conference.

In its 5 June, Sunday issue Népszabadság published the most important details of János Szentágothai’s presentation given at the General Assembly in a whole-page article. On 6 June it was reported in a brief news item that the UN Conference on environmental protection was opened in Stockholm. On 7 June a similar news item reported that the conference was in session and that the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme condemned the Americans bombing Vietnam in his speech.

Subsequently the paper did not deal with the event any more.

The Stockholm Conference primarily focused on environmental elements (atmosphere, water, soil, biosphere, landscape, settlements) but naturally the economic and social problems of developing countries also came to the foreground. Further on, the development of a set of institutions for environmental policy on national level was pressed for. In several countries the ministries and offices for environmental protection were set up in the 1970s.

In Hungary the Association of Engineering and Natural Sciences set up the Environmental Coordination Committee in the autumn of 1972 which coordinated technical and scientific activities.

The Patriotic People’s Front established a Panel for the Protection of the Environment. In March 1973 a national conference on the protection of the environment was called to Vác, where I also participated. When I saw that the highest-ranking politician was the Vác District party secretary of the HSWP, it became clear to me that the significance of environmental protection had not yet been realised in domestic politics.

Rio de Janeiro: social movements

Twenty years after the first world conference the UN organised the Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil in 1992. Tremendous development had taken place in the area of environmental protection from Stockholm to Rio. It was included in the action programmes of governments in every country of the world, and social movements also became stronger. There was a growing interest in environment-friendly technologies in the economic and business spheres as well. The concept of sustainable development appeared that wished to give an opportunity for all to satisfy basic needs and wanted to guard similar demands of the future generations as well.

Meanwhile the political conditions changed in the Soviet Union and in the East European region. Parliamentary democracies were established, market economy was being built, and the exercise of human rights was assured. The condition of the Cold War was terminated.

Unfortunately the economic and technological gap further widened between the developed and developing countries, and the environmental condition of the world was being further degraded in global dimensions. On regional and local levels however, a number of good examples could be listed and welcomed.

The report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the so-called Brundtland-Commission), entitled “Our Common Future” offered great help to the preparation of the Conference documents.

In Rio luckily the official delegation of Hungary was also present under the leadership of the Minister of the Environment Sándor Keresztes K. Our country was represented by President Árpád Göncz at the Earth Summit held as the closing part of the Conference, and he signed the legally binding agreements.

The major documents of the Rio Conference are as follows:

– Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development,

– Agenda 21,

– Framework Convention on Climate Change,

– Agreement on Biological Diversity,

– Global Forest Principles.

One of the interesting features of the work of the Rio Conference was that the major social interest groups participating in it got actively involved. Further on they will be discussed, with special regard to the role of scientific communities.

The Agenda 21 is actually a bulky collection of recommendations that are legally not binding, thus every government or organisation may use as much of it as it wishes. The document can be divided into four major units:

Social conditions • Protection of environmental elements • Social groups • Means of implementation.

The following belong to the groups of social interest representation:

– Women,

– Young people,

– Indigenous peoples,

– Non-governmental organisations (the green movements in this case)

– Local governments,

– Trade unions,

– Business and industry,

– Scientists and the engineering community,

– Agricultural workers.

Each of these social groups discussed the documents of the Conference. A large part of their comments was included in the final versions. In another respect this method of work also means that there is and will be a need for eliciting the opinion of the various social groups on national as well as regional levels and for asserting it whenever possible.

The Agenda 21 stressed that there was a far more open and flexible participation of the members of scientific and engineering communities in decision-making processes related to the environment and development. Further on, it is also important that the decision-makers as well as the public should get acquainted with and should understand far more profoundly the role of science and technology in human relations. An opportunity should be offered to the public to mediate their emotions. An improvement of communications and cooperation between the scientific and technical community and the decision-makers would make a broader utilisation of scientific and technical knowledge and information possible in the implementation of concrete programmes.

According to the Agenda 21 one of the most important aims is to acquire more and deeper knowledge about the relationship between human and natural environmental systems, to develop the means of analysis and forecasting, by which the environmental effects of the variants of development can be better understood. The aims of sustainable development should be defined with concepts that are based on scientific knowledge together with a scientific survey of the present condition and future of the systems on Earth.

Great promises and offers were made at the Rio conference. One such commitment was that the developed countries would transfer 0.7% of the GNP to developing countries for the acquisition of environment-friendly technologies. Unfortunately it was not implemented. Ten years later it was stated that 0.35% was earmarked for this purpose at the most. Wrangling related to the Convention on Climate Change also caused disappointment. In 1992 the Convention was signed, but it expressed only good will without specific commitments and deadlines. In 1997 such an accord could be elaborated in Kyoto that set the extent of the reduction of carbon dioxide emission. It is commonly known that later on the US did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol only entered into force in late 2002. Thus the process of implementation is very slow.

There was a celebration with stormy applause at the end of the Rio Conference. At that time we thought that we had succeeded in putting the world on a new track of development. Ten years later we had to realise that it has again been postponed for some indefinite time in future.

Johannesburg: economic and social policy

Ten years after the Rio, and thirty years after the Stockholm Conference the third world conference was held between 26 August and 4 September 2002 in Johannesburg, in the South African Republic. The official name of the event was UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (in Hungarian we rather refer to it as the UN World Conference on Sustainable Development). Changes in the name of world conferences (Rio–Stockholm–Johannesburg) well reflect the trend that the former concept of the protection of the environment later on was intertwined with the economic sectors and subsequently with social issues. Sustainable development has three supporting pillars, or in other words three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. Naturally they are manifest only in interrelationships, supplementing each other.

It is the primary merit of Johannesburg that it made governments, the business and economic spheres and civil society conscious that one should think and act in keeping with the concept of sustainable development. A change in the outlook can already be noted since the relatively short time after the event. The protection of the environment does not figure alone, but in consideration of economic growth and the related societal and social consequences. Surely it is not accidental that the European Union, obviously under the influence of preparations for the Johannesburg Summit, elaborated its own strategy for the realisation of sustainable development in 2001.

At the Johannesburg World Summit the Hungarian delegation was headed by Environment Minister Mária Kóródi, and Katalin Szili, Speaker of Parliament represented Hungary at the summit of the heads of state and government that was organised as the closing phase of the conference.

Johannesburg did not produce resounding new results. Essentially it confirmed the principles and commitments of Rio. Naturally some new aims also appeared in the approved documents that are being presented by the other authors of the issue.

Two documents were passed by the Johannesburg World Summit:

– Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development,

– Plan of Implementation.

In the following I would exclusively focus on the role of science.

The Plan of Implementation, summarised in 153 Items, mentions the importance of the participation of science and research in 13 occasions. These recommendations primarily pertain to natural resources (freshwater, seas, climate, soil, biodiversity) and to their sustainable development. In addition reference is made to the significance of the participation of science at passages on energetics and environmental health care. Scientific research is also needed for the installation of monitoring systems. The document stressed that the scientific capacity of developing countries should be enlarged.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that science had a bigger place in the documents of the Rio conference than in the Plan of Implementation of the Johannesburg World Summit.

The International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) was commissioned by the UN to prepare an analysis for the Johannesburg Summit on how scientific and engineering communities may promote the realisation of sustainable development. The report was prepared by ICSU and the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), in cooperation with the International Academic Panel (IAP), with the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and the Third World Academy of Science (TWAS). The report listed the most important research programmes of the past decades on the survey of natural resources. The paper referred also to the standpoints of the World Conference of Science held in Budapest in 1999.

The conclusions of the paper can be summarised as follows:

– Scientific and engineering communities, when they rely on the results of traditional disciplines, or researches driven by curiosity, should pay greater attention to the solution of problems deriving from social demand.

– The proportion of investments into science and technology should be increased in the world. Such investments are the economically most advantageous ones and their social return is far bigger than in the case of other investments. In the developed countries 2-3% of the GDP is spent on the R&D sphere, whereas in several developing countries this proportion is much lower than 1%. Global spending on R&D should be more than that, and the proportion of research and technological development serving sustainable development should reach 20 to 25% within it.

– The scientific and engineering communities should be committed to ethical norms and customs. They should pursue their activities in coordination, transparently, in a balanced way and honestly. They should present their results to the society and should win over its support.

– The scientific communities should assist the decision-makers by presenting them the possible alternative answers to strategic issues, they should explore new trends in proper time and should indicate the predictable mutual effects and their consequences.

– Scientists and engineers should have regular dialogues with politicians, they should actively participate in the work of such committees and bodies that study sustainable development; they should accept advisory functions for governmental bodies, in the leading organs of enterprises and in the respective committees of international organisations.

The Johannesburg Summit awoke new hopes in several countries. Their realisation greatly depends on what kind of incentives those thoughts will receive in which everybody agrees in general, but nothing is done for their realisation in the majority of cases.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 20:51–60.

MIHÁLY KÖKÉNY–GYULA DURA

Environmental Health

The participants of the World Summit, despite the intricate and significantly conflicting interests among groups of countries, were not only expected to confirm their commitment to sustainable development (the Rio accords), but they had to prepare an Action Agenda for their practical implementation. In addition to several international conferences held during the past ten years, the Millennium Declaration of the UN also worded a high level of political commitment to sustainable development so that the living conditions of people may improve irrespective of where they live. Thus the World Summit on Sustainable Development was not aiming at the shaping of a new programme but it had to create the implementation and realisation of already existing ones. It was particularly the EU that pressed for measurable aims and for the wording of timetables for implementation.

The Plan of Implementation of the World Summit is based on the broad agreement that sustainable development has three basic pillars, such as an environmental, an economic and a social one, which should be assessed jointly in the concrete measures and activities knowing that man is in the focus of sustainable development.

Sustainable development and health

In addition to consumption habits and production processes, the protection of natural resources, globalisation, the development programmes of regions, the means and institutions of implementation the Plan of Implementation dedicates a separate chapter to issues of health and sustainable development. The action programme contains medium-term tasks but also encourages thinking in the longer run, up to 2050. Perhaps this is not in a very distant time if it is remembered that more than half of those people are already born who would live in 2050. This fact also stressed that care for our children and grandchildren cannot be postponed. Further on, in 2050, for the first time in human history, the number of elderly people (above 60) will be higher than that of the young (below 15). Ageing society means new opportunities as well as a very major challenge. The question is how the positive trend, that the population of the Earth has never been so aged in the history of humanity, can be utilised for the improvement of the quality of life for the extended lifespan. There is no time to be wasted. It is known that annually millions die in illnesses caused by air pollution and spread by water. If this loss were caused by a single pathogenic factor surely the world would hurry to find the possibility of curing it.

There were many criticisms of the Johannesburg Summit saying that “there had been many words and few deeds”. Even such remarks could, however reveal that several problems could be raised at least to the level of understanding. One such realisation, more over statement put into the limelight was that the good health of people is indispensable to sustainable development. It is not only impermissible that burdening the environment as a result of industrial and agricultural production should damage the health condition, but it should be clearly declared that human health and the creation of welfare have to be put into the focus of sustainable development.

The cardinal point of the relationship between the environment and health is to understand that the health condition of the population should be regarded as a basic principle of sustainable development. The rather flexible definition of sustainable development does not clarify its relation to human health. In certain wordings human health figures as a point of usefulness, like a factor of economic development saying that the healthier the population is the more efficiently the economy functions. Acknowledging the right of all to health, investment into public health would promote economic growth.

The issue of human health can also be approached from the angle of societal development. Health sustained in the longer run can be interpreted in a stable and productive natural environment, where food is of good quality, drinking water and air are clean, and even the climate is free of extremities (retaining biodiversity). Equality, the stability of the societal environment and ‘social capital’ are also important besides clean environment and welfare from the angle of human health. Hence human health cannot be considered as merely labour force investment, or as an accidental consequence of economic development. It is more than that, it is the centre of development as a special value. Therefore it is the primary aim of societal development to improve the conditions of healthy and happy life. If the process of development does not lead to the improvement of sustained and fair health, then, in keeping with the basic interpretation, there can be no ‘sustained development’.

The health condition of the world

Shocking figures of health statistics were presented to the World Summit. In the developing countries annually 11 million children below the age of five die. According to data of the WHO and the UNICEF 70% of them are killed by diarrhoea, infection of respiratory organs, malaria, measles, or malnutrition. Researches show that 40% of illnesses that can be globally associated to factors of environmental risk hit children below five, whereas this age group constitutes only 10% of world population. In the year 2000 unsafe drinking water, the lack of sewages, bad hygienic conditions caused the death of 1.3 million children below the age of 5 by a group of diarrhoeas in the developing countries. In the same age group acute infections of the respiratory organs cause the death of 2.2 million children annually, 60% of which can be related to indoor air pollution, mostly to the burning of dried manure, of biomass in unsuited stoves and to bad heating.

All in all it can be stated that today 25% of all the preventable illnesses can be traced back to bad quality environment.

Bad health condition and illness cost a lot. Annually malaria kills one million people, 70% of them are children younger than five. It means an annual economic loss of USD 12 thousand million to the African countries. Had combating malaria been successful thirty years ago when already efficient means were available to it, the GDP of the African countries would be higher by USD one hundred thousand million today. In 2001 the number of HIV-infected persons is estimated as forty million, two-thirds of who are in the 15-24 year age group and 92% of them live in developing countries. The Director-General of WHO, Mrs Gro Harlem Brundtland pointed out that the often 10-15% prevalence of HIV results in the annual decrease of the GDP by 1%. Annually tuberculosis infects 8.8 million people and causes the death of 1.7 million. Ninety-nine per cent of the infected live in developing countries. It can be prognosticated that by 2020 as many as one thousand million may be infected and 200 million people may become actually ill, further on 35 million may die in it if adequate resources are not allocated for combating tuberculosis.

What is to be done?

An agreement was reached at the World Summit, partly in harmony with the UN Millennium Summit (September 2000), in that up to 2015

– the number of those living on one US dollar daily should be halved,

– the mortality rate of children below the age of five should be reduced to its two-thirds,

– maternal mortality should be reduced to its three-fourth,

– the spread of HIV/AIDS should be stopped and malaria and other illnesses should be pushed back.

A lot of money is needed to the realisation of the above aims. David Nabarro, Programme Director of the WHO’s Sustainable Development and Healthy Environment stated that governments should regard health care as an investment and not as expenditure. He quoted calculations from the Committee report entitled WHO Macroeconomics and Health according to which the developing countries currently spend USD thirty thousand million on health care and if they added another sum of thirty thousand million productivity would be multiplied by six and the life of eight million people could be saved. That USD thirty thousand million would correspond to about 0.1% of the GDP of developed countries.

The interrelationships among the condition of the environment, socio-economic conditions, demographic changes and human health are extremely complex. (Figure 1) The destruction and decay of the environment cause further damages, they may further harm the condition of health by polluted air, drinking water and food, or may promote the spread of infectious diseases. The influence of insufficient/deficient nutrition accompanying poverty, poor housing conditions, crowdedness, inadequate hygienic conditions, and the enhanced danger of infections on health are commonly known. Yet it is very difficult to scientifically determine the relationship between the environment, poverty and health, at most it is the downward spiral that can be sensed. Despite the complexity of factors determining health (Table 1) the formula is simple: the health of the population is the function of average income and of the condition of the environment.

The relationship between health and poverty can be simply characterised by the fact that poverty makes people more vulnerable towards illnesses, whereas illnesses make people more vulnerable to poverty. The interrelationship between water and health can be directly measured by the number of incidences in which children are rather significantly affected mostly in developing countries, but indirect connections for instance with food production and kitchen processing cannot be disregarded either. In the relationship between energy and health consequences on health deriving from air pollution and diseases caused by climatic extremities such as floods and heat waves are decisive. The interrelationship between agriculture and health such as the intensive use of chemicals and the enhancement of yields is also known. The appearance and spread of the new invasive species in the disturbed ecosystem, producing new forms of diseases refers to the relationship between biodiversity and health.

The tasks of environmental health care

The study of the relationship between the environment and health is facilitated by several factors, but there are circumstances that make it more difficult. A facilitating factor is that activities in environmental protection and health care are governed by identical principles, they use similar means and can be compared on the level of practical realisation. Both branches keep prevention in view, subsidiarity, equal rights to a clean environment and health, the principle of precaution and last but not least the fact that the preservation of a clean environment and of health can be achieved by a broad partnership of societal actors. Environmental protection and environmental health care operate similar systems of inspection and regulation (such as limit values, monitoring), based on good quality data, systems of observation and reporting, mechanisms of evaluation and analysis. And the national services presuppose the existence of quality-controlled laboratory work in network, scientific research and technical development, further on the preventive and/or sanctioning work of the authorities.

Among the circumstances making the relationship of the environment and health more difficult health care is demanded to supply proofs to such questions like

– how far the risk of the environmental factor is scientifically validated,

– what numbers of incidences of illnesses can be attributed to this environmental factor and by what strategy and cost can the cases of illnesses be avoided.

It is difficult to answer to the above questions because of the complexity of the environmental-health risk factors (Figure 2). The experts, the population and the government are increasingly anxious about dangers mediated by environmental elements threatening the health or welfare of people. An increasing number of new sources of danger threatening our health is discovered or rediscovered.

At least three causes may explain why the environmental damages have come to the foreground:

1. The rapid industrial development, and the introduction of new technologies often create new (chemical, physical, microbiological, accidents) sources of danger as side effects of economic development that could not be foreseen.

2. Increasing possibilities of accurate measurement and the constantly expanding networks of observation discover such sources of environmental danger that have been existing for a longer time but the conditions to their detection were missing.

3. The society becomes increasingly conscious about potential environmental dangers due to adverse experiences and reports on them by the mass media.

It is the task of risk assessment to recognise them, to estimate the extent of danger represented by them and to compare them to other sources of danger. It is environmental health care, linking public health, statistics and natural sciences, that is capable of giving an answer to the following issues:

– whether the environmental pollution of air, water and food represents a realistic threat to cause damages of health,

– whether exposure to chemicals would enhance the frequency of harmful long-term effects (tumours).

– Problems emerging during the course of answering to such questions also throw light on those difficulties that have to be faced when environmental health care assesses risks. These are for instance:

– the levels of the environmental exposure of toxic materials and their quantity penetrating the human body can be measured only with great uncertainties and at a high cost;

– at times it is not the environmental pollutant that is toxic, but its metabolite.

The dose and effect relationships of toxic materials are often disputable, as the variables reflecting the interrelationship are frequently unknown, or we are unable to measure them. It is particularly true in the case of low dose environmental damages that are effective for long periods of time. It can be justly assumed that such exposures cause real health problems, yet it is not easy to grasp their clinical or physiological effects on the level of the population. As often a long time elapses between the first exposure and the appearance of the illness, it may happen that one finds low incidence when the affected people are examined. Thus, particularly if the given agent reached only a small part of the population, changes in health status may remain hidden even for years. In addition, most of the people suffer complex damages therefore it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to explain a certain deterioration of health condition by a single environmental exposure. The situation is further complicated by the fact that several toxic materials do not cause characteristic reactions in the organism and an individual may be in contact with several toxic materials producing an identical effect. Thus, for instance, certain tumours may be equally related to certain carcinogenic exposure at the workplace, or to the individual’s habits and behaviour (like smoking, drinking alcoholic beverages). The elimination of such and similar disturbing effects is extremely difficult.

The available health data do not indicate unambiguously the influence of the physical, chemical and microbiological factors present in the environment in this complex system of interrelationships. Nevertheless, inequalities of health among the different social strata are often related to environmental conditions and hazardous factors enhance inequalities embodied in health status.

Factors of risk in health care

As far as health issues are concerned, there was no discussion in Johannesburg about combating the spread of infectious diseases, the need for increasing investments in health care and for an adequate and effective answer to the new challenges related to sustainable development. It is human health that is in the focus of attention without any doubt as the aims of sustainable development cannot be accomplished in places where there is poverty, the number of the incidences of avoidable/preventable diseases is high and the environment is degraded. Therefore the following should be considered as a strategic element:

– the study of factors of health risk and diseases that endanger sustainable development now and in the future;

– a broad analysis of factors determining health and illness;

– the application of sustainable systems of health care and of good management methods;

– bringing the above components together in cooperation within and outside the branch of health care.

Based on what was heard and seen at the World Summit, the following aims can be worded that may contribute to sustainable development by framework /action programmes of health care:

1. Reduction of poverty and malnutrition.

It should be achieved that the needy may have access to sufficient, safe and physiologically adequate food. The protection of health in consumption should be enhanced. A proper supply of microelements should be ensured.

2. The possibilities of the systems of health care should be broadened and their capacity increased so that they may guarantee an efficient and accessible health care that is affordable by all.

Infant and child mortality should be reduced. Equal access to financially affordable and efficient health care should be guaranteed, including access to basic medicines and vaccines. The efficient traditional knowledge of healing should be preserved and developed and its practice should be combined with modern medical science. Public health should be strengthened. The evolution of a healthy way of life should be effectively supported in forms suited for the age of the individual.

3. Struggle against the main diseases.

Security against epidemics should be corroborated. Preventive, promotional and curative programmes should be evolved and strengthened against non-contagious diseases, with special regard to cardiovascular, tumorous and chronic illnesses of the respiratory organs, to diabetes, and to risk factors related to alcohol, smoking, unhealthy nutrition and physical inactivity.

4. Perfecting the planning of health and sustainable development.

Considerations of health, particularly issues related to the vulnerable segment of the population should be integrated into strategies, policies, and programmes elaborated in the interest of sustainable development and reduction of poverty. A development of capacities and extension trainings should be initiated for the analysis of the relationship between health and the environment.

5. Tasks of environmental health.

The number of those who have no access to healthy drinking water should be halved by 2015 so that the prevalence of water-related diseases may be significantly moderated. By an efficient prevention of water pollution the hazards of health should be reduced and the ecosystems should be protected. Environmental effects damaging health should be reduced with special regard to the specific needs of children, and relationships between poverty, the environment and health. Illnesses of the respiratory organs caused by air pollution should be reduced with special regard to women and children. Exposure to chemicals in the environment and at the workplace should be reduced. Based on the Bahia declaration, the strategic line of the treatment of chemical materials led by the IFCS, should be further developed by 2005. The scientifically based estimate of the risk of chemicals and wastes should be strengthened from the aspect of human health, water base, vectors of illnesses, of biodiversity and the ecosystems.

6. The handling of risk should be supported by the health profession in preparations for disaster recovery.

The local, national and regional development of relevant early warning systems should be supported. Programmes should be elaborated for reducing the health effects of extraordinary events.

Systems of environmental health inspectorates, monitoring and health information should be incorporated into the plans of protection/preparation. Considerations of health should be integrated into the analyses, risk assessment of multi-factor hazards and risks, and into disaster management.

Naturally the international, regional and national institutions should be utilised for the realisation of the above aims, including the domestic Committee for Sustainable Development. A comprehensive national strategy of sustainable development should be elaborated, and within its framework the strategy of health care and environmental health should be coordinated with the programmes in progress and with the planned ones with special regard to the related aims of the “Johan Béla National Programme of the Decade of Health”, so that sustainable development may not remain only a superficial slogan. Their implementation should be pursued and the necessary conditions should be created. Due to obvious reasons the strategy of sustainable development, already approved by the EU, should be taken into consideration together with the programmes of the all-European ministerial conferences called Environment and Health.

*

Finally, the question arises why there is no progress if the vision of the future is so very clear. Perhaps because the world has changed extremely rapidly during the past ten years. In Rio the concept of globalisation was hardly used, whereas today, as it can be seen, inequalities have become even more marked, moreover, the information gap has been widening between the rich and the poor, inside and among countries. Trade and financial liberalisation has not been able to improve the global environment of macroeconomics either. Then why was it necessary to deal with an almost complete list of socio-economic and environmental issues? The answer is clear: so far the possible solutions to problems have been sought mostly by concentrating on one set of problems only and not on the issue as a whole. Its failure is well known. The situation may be changed by partnership cooperation and by commitments that can be measured and accounted for.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 20:121–138.

SÁNDOR KEREKES–KÁROLY KISS

Summary: Specificities of the Environmental Policy of Accession

During the past years environmental protection has been gaining increasing significance in the policy of the EU. Nevertheless, it should be clearly seen that it is the operation of the single market and the recently introduced single currency that enjoy first priority in the EU. Environmental protection in comparison to that is of secondary importance only; together with social provision and the protection of consumers the main task of environmental regulation is the operation of the single market free of disturbances. (The market is disturbed when environmental and consumer protection regulations, further on social provision significantly differ in the various countries, because companies of countries implementing a lower level of regulation may acquire competitive advantages in the single market, whereas a more rigorous environmental regulation may lead to discriminating import limitations not desired by the Community.)

Hence even that conclusion can be drawn (the assessment of the EU questionnaires by the Commission, and subsequently supported by the Commission assessment of the year 2000) that environmental protection may even be the arena of political and tactical motivations during the accession process.

It is a key issue for Hungary that the environmental and health parameters of our products should not mean a technical obstacle in trade, as it may affect the competitiveness of companies, exports, the manufacture of certain products, and hence employment.

Hungary is yet in a condition of deficient environmental infrastructure (sewage disposal and purification, waste management), and their development demands huge sums. Whereas in the developed industrial countries the integration of environmental aims into sectoral politics, the broad implementation of recycling, and the development of the systems of environ- mental management of companies are already on the agenda. A marked asymmetry can be observed between the developed West and North European countries and the East-Central European ones wishing to accede: while the per capita utilisation of energy and natural resources is usually higher in the developed countries and lower with us, the efficiency of the utilisation of these resources is higher in the developed countries than with us. In the majority of cases we emit less pollutants and produce less waste per capita, but due to lower technological and productivity levels the specific pollutant emission is higher in our countries.

The Western countries stress only efficiency of those two components and blame the East Europeans. At the accession talks however, attention should be called to the fact that the per capita utilisation of resources and pollutant emission are at least as important as environmental efficiency. We make efforts towards a more efficient utilisation of resources, and hence pressing down specific environmental burdening (which, in fact is realised also as a result of the structural change of the economy and of modernisation), but it should also be noted that the smaller volume of our resource utilisation and pollutant emission by itself results in a lesser burden on the environment.

The EU directives do not always consider the condition of the environment differing by country and how far the environmental elements can be burdened. The essence of directives should be that the general guidelines should be applied in keeping with the specificities of a given country or region. They are however not always taken into consideration. Therefore in a significant part of cases Hungary has to implement costly environmental developments in some respects when the condition of its environment is better than in several developed West European countries. (A typical case is the relatively good condition of our soils and the enormous cost of sewage disposal and purification.)

Obviously there are business interests as well behind these efforts: domestically the objectives of the local governments and interest groups involved and market acquisition by West European companies manufacturing equipment for purification and incineration, i.e. products of environmental industry.

The development of environmental infrastructure is extremely costly, it significantly burdens the state treasury, and the benefits are manifest only indirectly: in a better environmental quality and in improving health status as its consequence. Whereas in the developed industrial countries environmental protection realised on company level, the introduction of eco-taxes and other elements of environmental policy, while also representing a burden, enhance the competitiveness of companies (by saving of resources as well as by the enhancement of the environment-friendly nature of products). Hence they have direct economic advantages even in a traditional sense of the term.

It can also be noted that those tasks of environmental policy have come to the foreground by accession that would rather serve the mitigation of global and European, and not local and domestic problems. (The natural gas programme, and the rapid limitation of the carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emission of power stations, but even programmes related to sewage disposal have mostly served the regional aims of reducing pollution crossing over state borders.) Environmental policy enjoys greater support in the case of problems directly affecting the population’s quality of life and less in global issues. Whereas accession to the EU has brought the latter ones to the foreground.

Expectations facing the new entrants

A detailed and reliable wording of the expectations of environmental protection and environmental policy, set for the Associate Members, is given by the 25 August 1997 publication („Guide”) of the Commission.¹ The Guide has surveyed the so-called horizontal legislation dealing with the comprehensive and general issues of environmental regulation, including environmental impact study, the directives regulating obligatory information, and legislation related to such horizontal supporting mechanisms of the EU, like the European Environment Agency, or the LIFE-programme. It also dwelt upon problems of environmental law related to the individual environmental elements (quality of air, waste management, quality of water, etc.), or those going beyond general rules, or requiring particular attention, in other words upon all those issues that were not dealt with by the Essen White Paper of 1995.

Obviously it was the experiences of negotiations conducted with countries wishing to accede that prompted the Brussels bureaucracy to prepare the Guide. Though the Guide was ostensibly written in the ‘spirit of’ the White Paper, it is essentially more comprehensive for environmental issues than the White Paper had been. The 1995 White Paper contained all those requirements (and not only the environmental ones) that were necessary to the appearance of countries wishing to accede in the single market of the EU, but it covered only about 36 directives and 11 regulators of the totality of about 300 legal documents, whereas the Guide dealt with almost twice as many, namely with about 70 directives and 21 regulators. In addition the Guide made efforts to entirely cover the area in depth as well. The novelty of the document was that it dealt with questions of implementation rather extensively. The Guide revealed that implementation strategy should be convincing in view of the possibilities of economic realisation and the legal approach was to extend over the sanctioning mechanisms as well.

In our domestic legal approach it has been mostly the strictness of rules and norms that was put in focus and resolute steps were taken to assert the environmental principles of the EU, such as the principle that the pollutant should pay, the principle of integrated pollution preventing and the principle of subsidiarity in Hungarian environmental legislation. Whereas the Brussels bureaucracy, obviously not accidentally, focused on such elements of the institutional system of environmental legislation like the elaborated mechanisms of social participation and the involvement of stakeholders in general in the entire process of legislation and the implementation of law. The Guide especially focused on the issue of the ‘respective offices’ in the horizontal and detailed legislation as well, namely that we have to document convincingly that the ‘respective offices’ do possess the necessary professional skill and certificates that they are really ‘respective’ ones, but the Guide ‘raises’ also the issue of conflicting interests in relation to the ‘respective offices’: an authorising office cannot also promote a ‘project’.²

Differences in the social assessment and support of environmental protection

Environmental protection is a Janus-faced chapter of our accession to the European Union. This area is characterised by positive features (per capita environmental loading is modest, good indicators in the area of the protection of nature and of biodiversity, etc.) besides the grave problems (sewage disposal and purification, urban air pollution, the unsolved issue of waste disposal, etc.). What is rather alarming is that while the demand for a clean and healthy environment has been significantly revaluated in the developed countries, and the condition of the environment has become one of the most important components of the quality of life, in the countries wishing to accede environmental protection is not considered a problem that worries society most because of more urging economic and social problems, namely that some regions and social strata are lagging behind, poverty is becoming massive, and there is unemployment. This difference by itself provokes some reservation in the citizens of the EU Member States towards those wishing to accede. Citizens of the EU usually regard countries applying less rigorous regulations as ‘free riders’ (because that way they obtain competitive advantage in the single market), and they are also mistrustful towards food and other products coming from there.

The financing of environmental protection in the EU, in keeping with the principle of integrating environmental aims into economic policy, increasingly comes from the Cohesion Fund, the Structural Fund and agricultural subsidies and not from resources earmarked for environmental protection.

Hungary’s environmental achievement and the major characteristics of its environmental policy

The condition of the natural environment of Hungary may be regarded as mediocre in international comparison, and usually more favourable if compared to the other former East European countries. During the past ten years the trend of the set of conditions of domestic environmental policy experienced two breakages. The first one was caused by economic recession and the change of the system following it, and the second one by preparations for accession to the EU.

Economic recession primarily hit the heavy industrial sectors significantly polluting the environment and as a result significant improvement could be experienced in the so-called traditional forms of burdening the environment (sulphur-dioxide, nitrogen oxides, dust, heavy metals, etc.). Structural change of the Hungarian economy resulted in a favourable breakage of the trend regarding the age of applied technology, and the efficiency of the utilisation of matter and energy. Changes in the orientation of Hungarian economy in the external markets, and hence the market requirements of the EU becoming decisive had positive side effects. It can be felt in the solution of domestic environmental problems. An almost 70% share of the EU markets in Hungarian exports has made the prevalence of the quality requirements of the EU general in the domestic market as well. MOL (Hungarian Oil Company) for instance has been able to achieve significant results in altering the chemical composition of fuels, and it was partly due to this change that petrol of lead content could be eliminated from the market from May 1999 onwards.

Structural transformation that has taken place since the change of the political system and the moderation of personal consumption, further on the reduction of the energy consumption of the country³ has had a favourable impact on the environment. It was particularly the crisis of iron and aluminium metallurgy and of heavy chemical industry that was felt in the improvement of the quality of air, and facilitated the implementation of some international agreements on the environment (primarily the agreement on sulphur-dioxide). The quantity of sulphur-dioxide emitted to the air was reduced by almost 30% between 1985 and 1990 (Table 1.), largely because the use of coal was restricted. Sulphur-dioxide emission dropped by another 30% between 1990 and 1995, partly as a result of economic recession (emission by industry and agriculture), and partly because the natural gas programme was continued (emission by the population). The favourable impact of the reconstruction of power plants was beginning to be felt only during the recent few years (1999). Due to technological limitations changes of the emission of sulphur-dioxide by power plants was not significant between 1990 and 1997.

A similar change has taken place in respect of particulates. The first radical reduction took place between 1985 and 1990 (from 491 kiloton/year to 205 kiloton/year), and a continuous improvement can be observed since that time. Emission by the population was reduced by about half (34.4 kiloton/year) as a result of the natural gas programme between 1990 and 1997, while emission originating from transport has been growing here too.

The annual changes of the emission of nitrogen-oxides were characterised by a rapid reduction between 1985 and 1992 (Table 2), and then by slow growth after 1992. The rapid decrease up to 1992 was characterised by a moderation of the emission of nitrogenous gases by the industry and the population. Whereas increase after 1992 is unambiguously related to the growth of emission by transport and power plants. Thus the ‘environmental gift effect’ of economic transformation in respect of nitrogen-oxides can hardly be demonstrated on the basis of aggregate data, because the emission of productive sectors has decreased but the emission of nitrogen-oxides has increased more as a result of growing motorisation and the production of electric energy. (Table 2).

All in all the emission data of nitrogen-oxides may be regarded favourable since the growth of output of the productive sectors has been achieved parallel to decreasing emission. Transport emission however gives cause to anxiety in so far as the growth of nitrogen-dioxide emission is a consequence of a surge ahead of road transport and of a deteriorating performance of public transport. In addition growth has emerged despite the fact that emission per one ton, or one passenger kilometre shows a decreasing tendency due to a favourable change in the technical condition of the fleet of vehicles.

As far as methane emission, playing a significant role in greenhouse effect is concerned, there was no sizeable change between 1985 and 1997. As a result of decreasing animal husbandry and coal mining methane emission was less by about 100 and 42 kilotons respectively in 1996 than it had been in 1985. At the same time methane emission due to the transportation of natural gas grew by 85, and emission deriving from household wastes by 87 kilotons during the same period.

The EU makes significant efforts to regulate the emission of carbon dioxide, considered to be the most important greenhouse gas. It can be regarded an achievement that we are able to meet our international obligations in this respect too. Carbon dioxide emission was falling up to 1995, then it again started to grow with economic upturn. The carbon dioxide emission of the industrial sector, showing a significant improvement of performance and mostly producing economic growth has been evenly decreasing and the carbon dioxide emission of the population has also been falling (Table 3). In the latter case obviously it is the increasing price of energy that encourages savings.

Favourable changes are moderated by the structural transformation of transport degrading environmental performance in this case too (Table 4).

As data of the Table show, the growing performance of transport increasingly takes place along roads the environmental consequences of which are alarming not only regarding carbon dioxide emission. In the transport sector contradictory processes take place from the angle of environmental effects. While the emission of transport decreased as a result of economic depression and following the shrinking of economic activities working with large volumes of matter, in addition to the improvement of fuel quality, a surging ahead of motorisation and the decrease of the use of rail and public transport enhance environmental harm.

Prior to the change of the political system and following it hazardous wastes caused the most significant socio-environmental conflicts. Besides the real problems the chaos experienced in this area is also caused by the uncertainties of information and the ‘unwelcome activities of political adventurers’. Despite the fact that the area has been in the crossfire of constant political manoeuvres, the Ministry of the Environment has the data in Table 5 at its disposal for the period between 1993 and 1997.

The data are more suited for deterrence than for the elaboration of some kind of environmental strategy. According to the Table the quantity of hazardous wastes had hardly changed between 1993 and 1997, despite all efforts, what is certainly not true. The quantity of red slime (a remnant of aluminium production) for instance was reduced to its less than one-third, and the hazardous wastes of food processing industry dropped to less than half. It is worth noting about the latter one that a large part of it does not cause irreversible changes in the environment. The quantity of the wastes of the truly hazardous chemical transformations was one-sixth in 1997 of the quantity in 1993. And the quantitative growth of hazardous wastes of settlements and institutions should be welcomed for it means that we have succeeded in collecting separately an increasing part of the hazardous wastes that formerly had been put into communal waste (batteries, dry batteries, dyes, solvents, etc.).

The distortion of aggregate data is caused by the radical growth of the wastes of mineral origin between 1996 and 1997. Clearly it is the waste-rock of mining activities that is classified as hazardous waste of Class III by the government decree No. 102/96. This ‘item’ however totally hides all those achievements we have ‘accomplished’ in the prevention of the production of hazardous wastes. The inverted commas are justified by the fact that a large part of the achievements is due to the structural change of the economy, but the effect of those efforts is also significant that has been provoked by problems deriving from the productive sphere, by the radical growth of the expenses of the disposal of wastes, and from the administrative and social resistance to the disposal of hazardous wastes. As it is seen, the aggregate data hide these favourable tendencies, thus projecting a worse than real image of the condition of our industry and not only of our environment at the threshold of EU membership.

As a result of the transformation of agriculture the utilisation of fertilizers per hectare has dropped below 50 kilos, that is one-tenth of the quantity of fertilizers used in the Netherlands or Denmark per hectare. The utilisation of other chemicals by agriculture has also radically dropped, together with burdening the environment with chemicalization. The setback of the utilisation of fertilizers and herbicides was due to the reduction of the production volume and of the solvency of large-scale farming in agriculture. Animal husbandry was drastically cut, together with the most polluting pig-breeding with fluid manure. The favourable environmental effect however is partly diminished by the lack of control over the use of chemicals by small farmers.

The other break of trend is the consequence of our preparation for accession to the European Union. Priorities have changed in the field of environmental protection, in keeping with the EU requirements. The environmental legislation and practice of countries at first concentrates on the solution of environmental problems directly affecting the population, and cross-border problems and obligations deriving from international treaties would only come next. As a consequence of our intention to accede issues that presumably would have been dealt with only later on were promoted. Support of environmental policy is greater for environmental problems directly affecting the quality of life of the population and less for global issues, whereas accession to the EU has brought the latter ones to the foreground. (For instance, this was the case of the gas programme for the moderation of carbon dioxide emission, whereas urban air pollution is a direct health hazard affecting masses of the Hungarian population; such an extent of a domestic programme for sewage disposal and purification primarily serves the purity of the Carpathian basin as a catchment area and hence the interests of the Danube and the Black Sea, while we are struggling against the maintenance of clean drinking water that affects a significant proportion of the Hungarian population; we make rather expensive efforts to reduce sulphur-dioxide emission, while we are unable to deal with our grave problems of public health and labour hygiene.)

The two breaks of trend have been accompanied by several favourable consequences, but resulted in an unbalanced development. The framework law on environmental protection and the emission limit values meet the requirements of the EU, but the setting up of institutions have developed unevenly and the necessary conditions are missing to the operation of institutions having a decisive authorisation in environmental protection. For instance, the local governments have several authorisations in environmental protection to which neither the personal nor the objective conditions are sufficient. The Ministry of the Environment does not consider the experts of inspectorates and even less those of the local governments sufficiently skilled for the tasks to be solved, hence it is centralising authorisations whereas the issues cannot be managed centrally. The citizens have little trust either in the authorities or in the so-called independent experts. Often more efforts are spent on the identification of responsibility than on the solution of problems exactly because of the underdevelopment of the set of institutions. Presumably the problem of environmental policy that is most difficult to remedy is not so much supplementing the conspicuous deficiencies of the infrastructure but the elimination of mistrust towards the set of institutions. The adverse consequences of the latter one are manifest most in waste management, and particularly in that of hazardous wastes. The development of the necessary institutions in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity is more time-consuming than it was originally assumed by the time-span of EU-harmonisation. The development of such institutions was not accorded adequate attention, thus we have hardly succeeded in reducing lags in this area.

The focal points of our tasks for environmental policy

The Hungarian economy (disregarding agriculture) generally still pollutes the environment more than the economies of developed countries due to its still relatively backward structure and technological level⁴. It means that the emission of pollutants and the utilisation of resources of a thermal plant, an industrial one, a means of transport, machine or equipment, etc. of the same profile would be higher in most cases than in the developed industrial countries, and there is less money available for the elimination of environmental damages. At the same time the volume of economic activities, per capita consumption and the level of motorisation are much lower than they are in the industrially developed countries, therefore the situation in most cases is more favourable in our country in the area of per capita emission. This fact ought had to be emphatically stressed during the course of accession negotiations.

We are laggard in three important fields: in sewage disposal and purification, in waste management and in clean air. (The first two areas are often referred to as the infrastructure of environmental protection.) The 1995 Act on environmental protection and a series of subsequent supplementary laws and orders, the five-year comprehensive programme for legal harmonisation and the six-year National Programme for Environmental Protection point forward even independently of approximation and have created an expressly good framework for an environmental policy that is acceptable even by the EU. The acts on product charges have opened the way for the charging of environmental fees and their newer forms, and instruct members of the business world as well as citizens and make them accept that the use and pollution of the environment has a price to be paid or the shift to less polluting modes of production and consumption should be undertaken. The elaboration of the National Environmental Health Action Programme and of the National Programme for Agro-Environmental Protection is also remarkable. In addition the acts and regulations on animal hygiene, the act on foraging and food products, the acts on the protection of nature and on the protection of animals should also be underlined, as all of them harmonise with the regulations and practice of the EU Member States. In the area of sewage disposal and purification, and the protection of clean air the evolution of adequate domestic regulation is still missing. A further shortcoming is that no act has been drafted so far on plant protection, plant hygiene and for the regulation of industrial gene technology. Legal regulation should also be strengthened in the area of protection against noise and risk analysis related to hazardous materials and accidents.

The Commission of the EU, when assessing the questionnaires, acknowledged results achieved in environmental legislation, and stated that full harmonisation could be accomplished in the area of environmental law in medium term, on the other hand it held that the observance of environmental requirements could be hoped for only after lasting investments of significant levels and for administrative efforts in a series of areas (urban sewage disposal, quality of drinking water, some areas of waste management and air pollution), that may be solved after a ‘long’, or ‘very long time’ by Hungary.

The difference between the opinion of the Commission and the domestic experts was presumably explained by the fact that the condition of the environment unfolding from the answers of the Hungarian government was more adverse in several respects than the real one. The examples quoted by the EU Commission also mostly derived from the unjustified and partly distorted self-assessment (condition of the soils, sewage purification, wastes, quality of air). The Hungarian answer mentioned, for instance, intensive agriculture as a significant problem, further on also the nitrogen and phosphor load of waters of agricultural origin. As it was mentioned above, these were not in harmony with the data of specific fertiliser utilisation.

Naturally there are environmental problems in domestic agriculture, but Hungarian agricultural production has never been so intensive as the West European one.

We have drawn a similarly negative image of waste production and management, when we ourselves stated that „the specific and absolute values of production and communal wastes accruing in Hungary are high in international comparison.” Data used to assessment were mostly distorted ones, as neither building rubble nor discarded machines were considered by environmental waste cadastres in international practice. International comparison calls attention precisely to the lack of reliability and contradictory nature of domestic data, in other words, the above statement would obviously require more precision. Consequently we have to improve the domestic system of waste cadastre, but the solution of waste management problems is still awaited.

The assessment by the Commission and the examples quoted warn us to pay more attention to what image we are projecting about ourselves to the world. All this does not modify the fact that the three areas should continue to constitute the focal tasks of our environmental policy.

Our lagging behind the implementation of laws and regulations is partly a cognitive and partly a financial issue. The lack of money is primarily related to our low level of economic development. Domestic companies (those in domestic ownership) do not have sufficient means for environment-friendly technological development, and the state budget is unable to adequately finance the environmental executive organs and networks that are supposed to make the rules or norms observed. Often it is a mistaken decision of legal policy, the lack of intention, a missed transformation of organisation, or the lack of information that are behind the low level of implementation. The conditions of accession affect the set of institutions in several respects. As it is commonly known, subsidies from the Cohesion and Structural Funds of the EU can be obtained primarily for regional development, agriculture and environmental protection. Though the size of those Funds and the extent of subsidies that may open up sometime in the future are highly uncertain (more over, even the long-term existence of those Funds is uncertain), the support system of regional development and agriculture must be made ‘EU-conform’ by all means so that potentially we may become suited for winning those subsidies. Regional development is ‘by itself’ an environmental and land use issue, and as far as agriculture is concerned the most recent developments in the EU show that support is being increasingly linked to cultivation sparing the environment, to the preservation of biodiversity and its development.

The introduction of subsidiarity as the principle of optimisation among the decision-making levels also touches upon the set of institutions. In addition to strengthening the general process of democratisation and favourably influencing it, that principle plays a similar role to the introduction of West European principles and language of environmental policy, and the development of ‘EU-conform’ systems of support: we have to approximate the practice and decision-making structure of the EU member states in this area too.

Similarly to the unjustified negative image drawn by the Hungarian answers to the Commission’s questions about the condition of the environment, an excessively positive picture of legal practice and the level of the development of the institutions were suggested. The discrepancy between the answers given to questions related to the condition of the environment and of the set of institutions can be easily explained: the condition of the environment is an external factor influenced by other sectors, by the ‘pollutants’ for the Ministry of the Environment, whereas the creation and development of the set of institutions, including legal regulation, is its internal task and competency. And it is almost natural that we are more critical about the work of others and more lenient towards our own. The negative image painted about the condition of the environment evokes doubts of economic nature in the officials of the EU: how could infrastructure developments and programmes for environmental rehabilitation be financed? And the more favourable assumption mediated about the set of institutions raises the issue of the effectiveness of the set of institutions: if the set of institutions is adequate then why is the condition of the environment so poor?

It is clearly seen on the basis of the 1997 Guide that it is expedient to present the condition of the environment more exactly and to be somewhat more critical about the achievements in the development of the institutional system. The doubts of the EU bureaucracy can hardly be dispersed without it, since the EU has passed the level of development regarding environmental protection when norms declared by legislation would count as achievements by themselves. The respect and enforcement of norms guarantee environmental safety. If any condition of it is missing (either social attitude, or money) one cannot speak about environmental safety. One of the important messages, if not the most important one of the Guide is that there may be unsolved problems, but there cannot be problems we do not know about and we do not have programmes for their solution.

The 2000 assessment of the Commission on the progress of Hungary in the area of meeting the requirements of environmental protection does not give a very favourable picture. The opening sentence states that „...last year there was a small extent of progress made in legal approximation compared to the ambitious National Programme for Environmental Protection and to the 1999 National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis Communautaire ”. The summary of general assessment is not more flattering either: „So far only limited progress can be experienced in the area.”

The prohibition of the sale of leaded petrol and the setting up of the data base for the quality of air figure as positive measures. The report stresses the critical situation in relation to the passing of the Act on waste management. The Commission criticised Hungary for not implementing the short-term priorities of the Accession Partnership regarding the enforcement of the IPPC guideline, radiation safety and the environmental impact study.⁵ Activities in the area of sewage management of settlements and the protection of nature are praised. „Further efforts are needed to approximate the acquis communautaire, particularly in the following areas: horizontal regulation in view of assuring access to environmental information, stipulations for the implementation of waste management regulations, water quality standards for drinking water, baths, aquatic environment and sewage management, the prevention and reduction of industrial pollution, limitation of noise emission by building industry equipment and household gadgets ... Administrative capacity should also be further strengthened ...the systems of monitoring and data base should be further developed in the area of the protection of air, soil and against noise.” These were the tasks the performance of which was expected from us by the Commission.⁶

Economic and social impact study of accession

The adoption of the environmental law of the EU has been progressing in good speed. The most frequently raised question in this respect is how much it would cost to Hungary to meet EU requirements. Economic analyses so far performed have given contradictory answers moving within rather broad limits to this question. The gravest tasks appear in three or four areas. In addition to the estimated cost of about HUF 2300-2500 thousand million at 1997 prices of harmonisation tasks related to water, air pollution, waste management, and the directives of integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) the cost of the harmonisation of the other directives for the protection of the environment and nature appear to be insignificant. According to analyses the most significant item is sewage management, and particularly gap between closing the water supply and the development of sewage systems. It is precisely this area where the greatest difference of opinion has emerged among experts, perhaps because the survey of tasks is the most detailed one in this field, and it should be added that technologically it is the best founded. The discussion is first and foremost about the actual cost of building one km of sewage conduit (the so-called sewage estimate), about the desirable solutions of sewage disposal and purification, the environmental sensitivity of domestic areas and about the desirable proportions of sewage conduit system. Makers of the plans for development, starting from the literal implementation of the EU directives, considered supplying sewage system to 100% of settlements having more than 2000 inhabitants, and calculated the per km cost on the basis of the central estimate, while according to practical experience costs depend on actual conditions, and sewage conduits have been built in settlements for less than half of that estimate. The experts also challenge the need for the general implementation of the ‘activated sludge’ treatment of wastewater regarded as the only true one. According to the opinion of several of them the cost of the harmonisation of environmental law and the extent of the necessary derogation have been rather overestimated by studies, including those that were made in the framework of the Green Entry researches of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. One source of overestimation has been the different interpretation of the periods available for legal harmonisation. Currently we have considered only those expenses that are expected to emerge up to 2010, and the prices were calculated on the 1997 level. We made efforts to present low cost alternatives as well, if possible, first of all in the case of sewage disposal that would ensure the desirable environmental condition but presuppose a more flexible interpretation of the EU directive.

Social and economic effects

The different specificities of geographic, social and economic factors make the consistent implementation of the principle of regionalism necessary when environmental policy is elaborated and realised. Regional inequalities that manifest also in the quality of the environment are intertwined with social and economic differences, therefore the development of regions and settlements has an important role in the prevention and solution of environmental problems. Part of the existing environmental problems is explained by the underdevelopment of the infrastructure in the country, at the same time the potential negative environmental consequences of inevitable future developments may be reduced if environmental considerations are integrated into the plans and programmes of regional development. As a result both sectors may account for dual benefit while strengthening each other’s position: financing and the access to the development resources of the European Union may become more effective.

Environmental protection and the preservation of nature are also two areas helping and supplementing each, while the corresponding activities should be closely coordinated. The sustainable use of our natural resources and the preservation of our values are not only moral obligations, but also long-term economic and social interests, this is why the Basic National Plan for the Protection of Nature (NTA) was passed together with the general plan of implementation of the National Environment Programme. The environmental costs of accession would be dominantly manifest in the development of the infrastructure for the protection of clean air, waste management, sewage disposal and monitoring. It is the tasks related to the implementation of the IPPC directive that influence most the performance and competitiveness of the economy. In addition the study of costs extends over the cost of the establishment of institutions assisting implementation and enforcement (including educational and training demands as well). So far analyses have not considered the impact of costs on the future redistribution of incomes in the environmental context (neither in other areas to our knowledge). The impact on income distribution may be studied in several dimensions. Here it is expedient to mention two of them briefly. The first area is the impact of redistribution among sectors. While certain sectors are expressly bearers of the expenses of the desired improvement of environmental performance, other sectors get into an expressly more favourable situation as a result of the implementation of environmental requirements.

On the one side environmental policy related to accession to the EU obviously burdens some actors of the economy, whereas on the other side it creates new business opportunities. (A growing market, for instance, for building or environmental industry, a growing income expressed even in the number of days spent by tourists due to a cleaner environment, and an improving quality of the environment may mean a population of improving health condition for health insurance even if the latter ones may be sensed in a longer run.) These effects should be considered at financing, hence the expenses of environmental development should not be necessarily collected only from the polluting sectors. In other words, the polluting sectors should not be burdened by further environmental taxes during the preparatory period as it would be more expedient to press them for accepting voluntary obligations by contracts. It would better serve the realisation of the criteria of economic efficiency and would be in full harmony with the objectives spelt out by the IPPC directive. It is expedient however to involve branches profiting more from an improving quality of the environment in financing environmental development for the reason that they are going to be the beneficiaries of a speeded up development because of the growth of their price income or the lowering of their costs (even in shorter /building industry, environmental industry/, or a longer term /tourism, health insurance, etc./).

Another dimension not to be disregarded is the impact of environmental measures on the income structure of households. Meeting the environmental requirements would have a significant influence primarily through the growing price of energy, of fees for water and sewage disposal and for waste management, but it may have a differentiated impact on households depending on income levels. As the expected increase of the public utility charges will only marginally affect the expenses of strata in the top income categories, more over their energy-saving measures would return to them, in the case of those belonging to lower income categories the increase of public utility charges represents an unbearable burden (in cases taking up 20-25% of the family income).

The territorial distribution of strata belonging to the different income categories rather enhances and does not reduce problems. Higher income strata usually live in areas with good public utility supply, while in the case of people living in areas of poor supply there is no chance of their contribution to the necessary developments. If the 3 or 4 times average per capita income difference between the eastern and western parts of the country is considered then obviously the possibility for the inhabitants for contributing to the development of public utilities, the so-called ‘absorption capacity’ is missing in many settlements in the eastern part of the country. From an environmental aspect accession to the Union may have obstacles that are not primarily due to the economic performance and load-bearing capacity of the country. The real problem is caused by spending resources available for investment on the development of such local infrastructure that is less important and efficient as a consequence of lobbying by the local business and political circles. This distracts resources from the most burning issues and from solutions that are most efficient on the level of the national economy.

There is a realistic opportunity for acquiring and utilising EU resources serving the reduction of regional differences only if we prepare ourselves for these problems and are capable of handling them.

Meeting the environmental conditions of accession is accompanied by a respectable profit. Well-founded international analyses show that the returns of environmental investments consistently exceed the average rates of return realised by investments in other areas. They are mostly benefits that cannot be expressed numerically but rather appear in the condition of the environment (revaluation of natural capital), in improving human health, and in effects favourably influencing and encouraging other sectors and spreading further in circles of waves.

Conclusion

The space of movement of environmental policy in relation to accession to the Union is strongly influenced by the income position of the population, as the greatest backwardness is found in such areas of environmental infrastructure like the availability of sewer system, or waste management. The estimated cost of the building of aquatic public utilities itself only would be between HUF 500 to 800 thousand million, hence those opinions are understandable that stress primarily problems of financing in relation to accession to the EU and to environmental protection.

In our view the management of those social conflicts is even more important than financing that hamper decision-making in the area of community investments trying to achieve equally optimal efficiency regarding the environment as well as the economy. Experience shows that budgetary subsidies serve the interests of economic development as well as environmental protection with deteriorating efficiency. Decreasing efficiency is partly a natural phenomenon, but it is quite probable that the ‘pressure’ of regions and strata in a too strong position of interest assertion would considerably deteriorate environmental effectiveness, and this is the reason by which we really risk meeting the requirements of accession to the Union.

Notes

1

Guide to the Approximation of European Union Environmental Legislation. Commission Staff Working Paper. Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, 1997.

2

Page 26 of Guide. Obviously the Guide refers to the solution of conflicting interests related to local governments in connection with environmental impact study.

3

From 1316 PJ in 1989 to 1043 PJ. In 1994 and after the beginning of economic growth even the value for 1998 was only 1046 PJ.

4

This statement covers up extremities miles apart, as incoming working capital usually represents the most developed technological standards.

5

The realisation of the IPPC guideline is a long-term task even for Member States, therefore we are somewhat at a loss to receive that criticism.

6

Annual report of the European Commission, 2000, Chapter 22.