Overview
III. Conclusions
Achievements
Environmental awareness-raising
Public meetings and discussions on environmental protection issues contributed to environmental awareness-raising. This could materialize in more environmentally responsible behavior by citizens. Environmental protection at the local level involves several small and dispersed activities. Pollution prevention is the most obvious, cost effective and feasible at the level of small offices, businesses and households. There is also the potential to reduce a stream of waste generated at source by the community. This option could be fully inspected due to development of the LEAP at the level of the community. LEAP's role in raising the environmental awareness of the local community was equally important as its role to select and coordinate environmental investment projects.
Education and training
Environmental planning requires specific technical skills, expertise, communications techniques, economic analyzes. Most have not been used in respective countries. Full understanding of the entire project methodology by project participants is of the highest importance. Comprehensive training of the core group of project participants was instrumental for project development all the LEAPs. Involving trained local experts is the most effective way of project replication and continuity of the whole process. Successful LEAPs will strengthen the capacity of all stakeholders.
Local identity and capacity development
The LEAP process offered the opportunity to work together on a voluntary basis for a common environmental benefit. This experience was essential to re-establish commitment and responsibility, and a shared ownership of the planned environmental protection activities. Public engagement in assessing environmental problems and selecting solutions helped in creating a local identity. Citizens' identification with their region or town is not strong in the CEE countries. Due to historical and political reasons, the development of a strong and well organized local community has not taken place. People should share and agree on their visions and expectations and work for common goals in order to identify themselves with the town or region. This process should be continued. Creating LEAPs significantly contributed to the creation of democratic societies by introducing and using participatory methods for consensus-building, negotiation, conflict resolution, joint projects, information sharing, etc. The capacity for participation was built throughout the process. It is difficult to measure, but the capacities of all stakeholders in the process were enhanced.
Resistance towards centralization
It is a tradition of the CEE countries to centralize authority in capitals and to curtail independence and self-governance of municipalities. These tendencies are still observed, despite the new laws and visible efforts to strengthen local authorities. The process of decentralization of rights and responsibilities depends on the active attitudes of citizens. The LEAP process has brought about many arguments for establishing a mechanism activating local communities.
Problems
Political and social support
Due to economic hardship in many countries, which is usually worse in smaller towns and villages, an integrated approach to environmental protection is still absent. If a community faces economic decline, rising unemployment, decreasing real wages, etc. it is difficult to come up with ideas to integrate the environment with the economy. Economic stability or prosperity is required first. Also, many countries have tended to focus on short-term profit policies relying on the power of the market economy system. In this light, municipal authorities can hardly see the benefits of comprehensive environmental planning.
Public engagement
Despite a steep increase in the numbers of environmentally-oriented interest groups in the region, public awareness on pressing environmental issues is low.
The local level seems to be the best place for involvement, especially in mid-sized cities, which report success. But this involvement is usually limited to volunteers who work in project committees. Efforts to involve the public - not only for work in project committees - and encourage the LEAP to be adopted by the majority of citizens have thus far failed.
Environmental information
Environmental information created a basis for deciding on environmental priorities. Despite improved systems of data collection for national reporting in most CEE countries, at the municipal level there is an absence of data related to the condition the environment.
Environmental inspectorates, hygiene institutes and environmental departments all possess equipment and trained personnel. The rights and responsibilities allowing a proper flow of information do not reflect new political-economic conditions. Enterprises and industry became a valuable source of information on pollution. In order to improve their image, they are often willing to provide the results of environmental audits to municipalities.
Unclear responsibilities
Successful LEAPs require cooperation between municipalities, local authorities and business, NGOs, public, different agencies and institutions. But effective cooperation can be practiced only with clearly assigned mandates, roles, and responsibilities.
This obstacle was encountered mainly in environmental data collecting. It was usually difficult to identify who is responsible and for what. Another serious problem relates to the representatives of people working in different committees. Their purely defined mandates result in a lack of responsibility and interest. The Upper Nitra project's goals were changed from developing a real regional action plan to designing an institutional framework for the regional cooperation as a start-up of any further cooperation process at a regional level.
Indicators of the LEAP progress
Evaluation should be an integral part of all project activities. Evaluations are needed to determine how the designed goals are being met. They also provide a basis for making mid-course revisions in the strategies and timeframe. So, monitoring and reviews should be included in all stages of the plan implementation.
There is a wide array of environmental indicators constituting a basis for comprehensive decisionmaking. Ideally, LEAPs should specify indicators for monitoring the status of the environment based on local circumstances. Indicators tell us whether the action has been carried out as planned, and if the action has had the excepted impact. These indicators could be selected or developed when concrete measurable targets have been approved by project participants.
In already designed LEAPs, such indicators are missing. The LEAPs still underway are open to include indicators while an implementation plan is designed.
Lack of financial resources
Inadequate funding of environmental protection is a common deficiency in most CEE countries. Ineffective allocation of scarce resources is often caused by putting money in projects of relatively low importance.
Examples show that some municipalities allot a significant part of their annual budgets to environmental measures (app. 15 percent in Kolin, Czech Republic). Usually it is much less, and available money cannot cover all the inherited problems from the past (dumps, obsolete systems of households heating, lack of sewers and waste water treatment plants, etc.).
In order to wisely invest scarce resources, it is necessary to carefully prioritize environmental problems and possible solutions, and choose highly cost effective solutions with a high benefit-to-cost ratio. The coordination in selecting projects to fund from national and local sources is necessary to concentrate resources and avoid possible overlaps. It is also necessary to reconsider usual ways of financing environmental projects and develop effective systems of domestic funding that combine available sources.
Needs
Make a LEAP affordable
There are clear reasons why LEAPs are so rare in the CEE region. A gap in leadership and in a proven capacity to develop environmental policy plans at the local level makes it necessary to rely on foreign input. The LEAP development was also not facilitated by the environmental authority at the central level, which could provide missing skills and knowledge. Environmental problems seem to be less addressed by local authorities due to the pressure of other problems, including a shortage of funds in local budgets. Local authorities often copy the business methods of central bodies. This makes innovative and participatory procedures of planning and decisionmaking difficult. There is the need to reverse this trend and to make LEAPs affordable to the local communities.
Strengthen the implementation
It seems that passing from a plan to real action is the most problematic step for all the LEAPs. The worst situation is if the LEAP raises expectations which cannot be met.
To overcome the wide gap between planning and implementation, LEAP should be designed to include a complete implementation plan. In that case, the whole LEAP - including the implementation plan with a calculated budget and other resources needed - will include the necessarypolitical support at the outset. Commitment and support of the Municipal Council to the LEAP implementation is a crucial point in the process.
Integrate LEAP and NEAP
No real connection between collected LEAPs and environmental strategies at national level exist, despite some vague declarations.
The LEAP provides a methodology applicable both at national and local levels. But the methodology for preparing environmental investments is to be adapted to country-specific conditions. Local LEAPs, especially, must be tailored to the colorful conditions of big cities and smaller towns, more developed countries and countries which are progressing at a slower pace. The LEAPs have been developed with minimal links to national environmental policies.
National environmental strategy should provide a framework for LEAPs and create the necessary information channels on national priorities for environmental investments, regulate the speed of planned changes, long and medium-term goals, design pilot projects, direct foreign aid, and assist in replicating LEAPs in other communities or regions. National level institutions, such as the Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Health, can play an important role in providing information and technical assistance. On the other hand, LEAPs should provide policymakers at the national level with feedback about how realistic national plans are, what the pace of changes is, and what are the real needs at the local level. LEAPs can strengthen the capacities for environmental planning of national level bodies by providing this feedback information. In an ideal case, both national and local strategies will mutually benefit.
Consider sustainable way of living
Do LEAPs necessarily lead respective municipalities to sustainable development? Should this be their ultimate goal? How to measure this?
Most countries endorsed obligations to future generations at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992. One chapter of Agenda 21 - the main outcome of the Conference - was devoted to local authorities' initiatives. It was clearly recognized that many of the problems addressed by Agenda 21 can, and must be, solved at the local level.
LEAPs contribute to overall local development and an improvement in environmental health. LEAPs provide a unique chance to work out and implement the idea of sustainable development at a smaller scale than the country level. "Sustainable LEAPs" will not only improve the quality of the environment, but reduce environmental impacts at the lowest cost. Management practices will respect the limited potential of local ecosystems and natural resources, while developing in a sustainable way.
Proceed with decentralization
Administrative reform in the CEE countries needs to be finalized on a principle of self-governance and self-financing. The implementation of LEAP investment projects should become the duty of the local government. A good quality and professionally prepared LEAP may become a highly prized product only if responsibilities and resources are legally made available at local level. A demand-driven LEAP may become a reality if countries proceed with the decentralization of authority and create the legal and financial groundwork for community-based environmental initiatives.
REC * PUBLICATIONS * DEVELOPING LOCAL AND REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION PLANS * OVERVIEW
