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Central European Environmental History and the EU Accession Bedrich Moldan and Tomas Hak* Charles University, Environment Center, Jose Martiho 2, 162 00 Prague 6, Czech Republic
’ INTRODUCTION Some of the countries of Central Europe (CE) have undergone a dramatic transition in all spheres since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Out of the 27 current members of the European Union, 12 are the so-called “New Countries” that acceded in 2004 (Cyprus, the Czech Republic (In 1993, former Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic), Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and 2007 (Bulgaria, Romania). With the exception of Cyprus, Malta, and to some extent also Slovenia, all of them were part of the Soviet Bloc until 1990, and the three Baltic States were part of the Soviet Union. In this paper, we focus on the development of environment-related phenomena in the Czech Republic and in some other CE countries (Figure 1). Quite similar features can be recognized in other countries of the former Soviet Bloc that are now members of the European Union. These countries, based on a common history and their present interests, were motivated by the desire to eliminate remnants of communist rule. Despite the dreadful shared legacy of the totalitarian period, these countries have made great efforts in a number of fields of common interest (including environmental protection) guided by the notion of catching up with the more developed Western countries. And they have achieved remarkable results in their approximation to Western Europe (WE). ’ THE YEARS AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR Due to the prevailing Soviet power in the Central European region after WWII, a rather uniform economic and political system was imposed on its countries. Its fundamental feature was central planning whose primary concern was not people’s welfare but the Soviet ideological objective of world dominance to which everything was ultimately subjected. The economy was dominated by oversized steel production, the use of chemicals, mining, r 2011 American Chemical Society
electricity production, and heavy machinery. The absence of competition among individual enterprises, and the lack of a functioning market and skilled managers led to inefficiency and waste. This system was able to operate only through the excessive exploitation of all sorts of easily accessible natural resources thanks to the enormous mineral wealth of the vast expanse of the Soviet Union, as well as the lack of corrective price signals. At the same time, the communist rulers pretended that the system was the most advanced and socially just, etc., and in principle, immune to any of the evils affecting “rotten capitalism”, including environmental damage. As a result of the dictatorial regimes that reigned in the CE countries, and the nonexistence of a free press or civil society organizations, the public was either unaware of its negative features or accepted the status quo. Important books that raised environmental awareness in the West—for instance, R. Carson’s Silent Spring1 or Meadows’ Limits to Growth2 were not translated into local languages and neither was information about major international events of that time available (e.g., the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972). There was therefore naturally no need to worry about it. Vanek in his book analyzing in detail the causes of the critical state of the environment calls this time the “years of inactivity”.3 When the sinister effects of pollution became more than apparent (in the late 1960s and 1970s), some measures were applied, but none of the effort was serious or genuine. The laws were mostly only proclamations never meant to be enforced. Because of the rigidly and hierarchically organized economy, no independent controlling body existed. In addition, in the late 1980s, the regime’s answer to the increasingly threatening environmental damage was concealment of vital information about the state of the environment and the absolutely inadequate measures taken. For instance, workers in one of the most polluted regions in the Czech Republic obtained a little money as compensation. This compensation was readily renamed “funeral money” by the people; it was accepted with scorn and contributed to the growing hatred toward the regime. The state had no means—no knowledge, no technology, no money, and no public support—to deal with the growing problems. It is not possible to list even briefly all the negative factors that contributed to the final catastrophic situation (and the collapse of the political system). The important factors were a biased educational system and intellectual isolation from Western thinking. Education was based on ideology instead of facts, i.e., objective information and knowledge. Every new idea was automatically suspected as potentially subversive. As a result, the whole system (i) produced ideologically distorted results, and (ii) was very rigid (every piece of information was checked several times before endorsement). An exemplary case of the
Published: March 09, 2011 3823
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Figure 1. European region (present) with the former “Black Triangle” area. Note: EFTA (The European Free Trade Association) is a free trade organization among four European countries that operates parallel to the European Union.
remoteness of the period’s thinking and inability to learn was the episode of the 1973 Arab oil embargo with a temporary shortage of oil-based products in some Western countries (gas in the United States) and the enormous increase in the price of oil. Reflection by the public at large on the fundamental role of cheap and plentiful energy in the modern economy and society and it prerequisites was completely lacking. People of the Soviet Bloc were only marginally informed about “yet another symptom of the overall incompetence of capitalism” while they were relatively reliably supplied with ample resources from the Soviet Union. No discussion, no reflection, no understanding. The overall result after about 40 years of communist rule was the truly catastrophic state of all environmental phenomena.3,4 The situation is documented by most of the basic national indicators and it was aggravated by the existence of many hot spots of heavy industrialization and mining, as was in the infamous “Black Triangle”—the lignite mining region in the heart of Europe in the corner of former Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the former German Democratic Republic (Figure 1).5,6 The difference between the more developed WE and the CE countries was striking. For example, the CE countries emitted significantly higher amounts of harmful SOx pollutants into the air, causing detrimental effects to both human and ecosystem health. In 1990, average WE countries’ emissions were about 37 kg SOx per capita per year, while CE emissions (the average of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary) were 112 kg SOx per capita per year. Many environmental parameters (primarily air pollution, but also surface and underground water contamination, landscape degradation, etc.) were the worst in all Europe.5,6 Literally, every major industrial company caused serious damage to the environment through uncontrolled emissions made during its production processes or the dumping of waste in landfills. These “old environmental burdens” (sites contaminated by industrial or other activity and the abandoned military bases of the Soviet army) are such problematic remnants of more than 50 years of
nondemocratic regimes (19381989) that systematic efforts just to make an inventory of them are still underway. According to the latest data, there are several thousands of such sites in the Czech Republic alone. Due to the large extent of these polluted areas, the health of a large share of the population has been seriously endangered either directly or through contaminated groundwater (polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals, chlorinated hydrocarbons, petroleum substances, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc.).7 As a result of the worsening situation, the environment gradually became one of the main issues on CE countries’ political agendas. These issues were catalysts in helping to expose the overall failure of the system and important rallying points for the democratic opposition in many countries.
’ AFTER THE FALL OF THE TOTALITARIAN REGIME When the system finally collapsed at the end of the 1980s and new democratic regimes were established, the environment was among the challenges people regarded as the most pressing. For example, in one of the first public opinion polls in the Czech Republic (in February 1990), 83% of citizens regarded environmental cleanup as the most important job for the new government6 (see Figure 3). The situation was similar in the other CE countries.8 Indeed, the massive effort to clean the “communist mess” began immediately and was generally successful.9 Several factors contributed to its success. Probably the most important was wide and genuine public support. Because of their general hatred of the communist system, people blamed the previous regime’s rulers for all the perceived evils of that period, including environmental damage, so the desire to change everything both profoundly and immediately was overwhelming. It was enhanced by the sense of immediate danger posed to human health by the extremely polluted air, water, and food. The availability of information was immediately greatly enhanced (for example is the first 3824
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Figure 2. Key environmental trends in the Czech Republic 19902008: environmental investments; SOx emissions; BOD5, CODCr, and suspended matter in watercourses (index, 1990 = 100). (Source: MoE, CENIA).
Figure 3. Public perception of urgency and satisfaction with environmental issues, Czech Republic, 19902005. (Source: MoE, CENIA).
comprehensive State of the Environment of the Czech Republic report published in hard copy in April 1990 by the Ministry of the Environment, after only being established in January of that year). When travel was no longer restricted people saw with their own eyes the much better state of the environment in the Western countries. They were eager to join the club of WE countries as soon as possible and understood that this would also require a serious cleanup effort. Dozens of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) started to work quickly in all CE countries, including international NGOs (for example, the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe established in Hungary), contributing to raising public awareness and education. The Czech Republic, for instance, witnessed the establishment of umbrella organizations such as Green Circle or Pavucina (an association of education and awareness NGOs), Czech branches of international organizations (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth), thematically focused organizations such as Auto*Mat, Bohemian Greenways (sustainable transport), Veronica Ecological
Institute (climate, energy, green households), and large membership-based organizations such as the Czech Union for Nature Conservation, among others.10,11 Good models of environmental legislation did exist both in the form of Directives of the European Community and other documents, and in individual WE countries. The experts of the newly established environment ministries were eager to quickly draft the necessary new legislation that was almost completely lacking before. In the Czech Republic, for instance, the entire skeleton of a modern environmental legislative framework was established during a “legislative typhoon” in the first three years after the fall of communism. Among the key bills were the establishment of the Ministry of the Environment (in December 1989), insertion of environmental clauses into the new constitution (1990), creation of the Czech Environmental Inspectorate and the State Environmental Fund (1991), enactment of the EIA process (1992), a framework law on environment (1992), and bills on protection of air, nature, and agricultural land, and on waste management, mining, and spatial planning (1992). 3825
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Environmental Science & Technology New or strengthened ministries and other institutions (including policies and procedures) were established and started work immediately. These new mechanisms allowed for the effective cooperation of the economic, social, and ecological sectors. In Poland, for example, the National Commission on Sustainable Development—established in 1994—was a precondition for intersectoral policy making.12 In Hungary, a new organizational setting was created for environmental administration in 1990. Environmental protection was separated from more economically oriented fields, e.g., water management (water utility resources). Generous financial support, both domestic and foreign, was essential. In the Czech Republic, where the resources were basically domestic only, up to 2.6% of GDP was spent on environmental protection (Figure 2). In the 1990s, the CE countries spent proportionally more money than the EU countries. National environmental funds were established in many countries; they provided mainly soft loans to the municipal sector. In Poland, the successful Polish Environmental Fund ECOFUND established in 1992 applied a modern financial mechanism and provided “debt for nature” swaps. It was an initiative unique throughout the world that enabled part of the country’s debt to be spent on environmental protection projects. Later, three other countries—the United States, France, and Switzerland—decided to use this mechanism as well. Foreign nonreimbursable aid helped CE countries to a lesser extent. This was support from the official bilateral and multinational aid of foreign governments and international institutions. This assistance, including the PHARE program (a preaccession instrument financed by the European Community to assist the applicant CE countries in their preparations for joining the EU), was devoted to the development of master plans, feasibility studies and business plans, education and training, and governance.12 Oversized heavy industry and mining, etc., were naturally reduced, which was accompanied by a drop not only in GDP but also in harmful emissions of all kinds of pollutants. The restructuring of the economies increasingly focused first on manufacturing, and then on the service sector as well, which contributed greatly to positive environmental changes. Service industries had generally been neglected under central planning. The share of services in both GDP and employment has grown significantly in almost all the transition economies since 1990. The greatest growth has been observed in the Baltic States, which have almost converged with the OECD average of 68% in terms of GDP shares, although their employment shares remain lower. The CE countries which acceded to the EU in 2004 have also converged to a large extent.13 The CE countries did not need to innovate in environmental technologies. They simply used what was already available, in many cases with the help of foreign investors. During the very broad privatization process, many advanced industries arrived in CE countries that operated under the generally strict environmental rules of their home countries and this not only contributed to the cleanup efforts, but also served as good performance models.
’ THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WESTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE HAVE DECREASED SIGNIFICANTLY BUT SOME STILL REMAIN As we have seen, at the beginning of the transformation period after the fall of communism in 1990, the New Countries were very different from the “Old Europe” of the 15 Member States of the European Community at that time in most respects: economically, politically, socially, and of course also environmentally.
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In most CE countries, the environmental improvement during the first transition decade was rapid and massive.12 An example is the Czech Republic, where the rapid reduction of emissions of air pollutants was especially spectacular (Figure 2). As documented by CENIA,14 new and rebuilt wastewater treatment plants improved the water quality, protected areas increased, pollution discharges into water decreased, etc. As an example, a remarkable decrease in all water pollutants has occurred over the past 15 years in the Czech Republic: organic pollution expressed by biological and chemical oxygen demand (BOD5 and CODCr indicators) decreased 7-fold between 1990 and 2008. There has been less success in reducing nitrate concentrations due to surface pollution connected with the application of nitrogen agricultural fertilizers. The overall improvement of water quality was significantly affected by the restructuring of industry and industrial technology; the subsequent construction and modernization of sewerage systems, and of both industrial and municipal wastewater treatment plants were key factors here. The underlying motivation for the improvement was compliance with the EU Water Directive. EU membership means that the most dangerous environmental issues, including the infamous “hot spots” of the communist days, have been resolved. The accession to the European Union and the preaccession process that started during the 1990s played a major role in all the CE countries in several ways. During the formal accession negotiations, many legislative gaps and factual shortcomings were identified and gradually rectified. It should be noted that the Environmental Chapter was one of the most difficult and extensive ones in all country negotiations. All the New Countries that are currently Member States of the European Union have free and democratic regimes with market economies and acquis communautaire, a common legal framework for the entire EU. During the period of preparation prior to the accession, the candidate countries had to fully adjust their legal systems and implement— with only a few short transition periods permitted—all the EU Directives, Regulations, and other elements of the acquis. Thus, they share common environmental norms and rules. On the other hand, along with these commonalities, there are still important differences between the “old” and “new” countries. A number of old environmental problems persist while some new ones have emerged, and so far no appropriate measures have been found to mitigate them. The original spontaneous public support has all but evaporated—as in the United States and WE—because people believe that many of the problems of pollution have been resolved in the past two decades and economic issues should now take precedence. A strong decoupling between the fall in the public perception of the importance of environmental issues and the growth of public satisfaction with the local environment in the Czech Republic provides clear evidence of that (Figure 3).14 Declining public support is concomitant with substantially decreasing financial resources for environmental protection. The capabilities of the end-of-pipe technologies that proved to be effective at the beginning have mostly been exhausted and new environmentally friendly technologies are being implemented only very slowly. New challenges, such as rapidly increasing road transport and urban sprawl, are not being properly addressed. The continuing deeply rooted tradition of wasteful practices, most visible in the energy sector, is very important. The energy intensity (the efficiency of conversion of energy into national product) of CE economies is still markedly higher than that of the “old” EU countries (Figure 4).15,16 3826
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Figure 4. Energy intensity of the economy (kgoe per 1000 EUR), selected EU countries, EU-15 and EU-27 average, 1995 and 2006. (Source: CENIA).
Figure 5. Used domestic extraction, EU-15, EU-10, and EECCA countries, 2000. (Source: EEA).
There is a similar situation in the area of natural resource use as documented by Figure 5. The figure depicting used domestic extraction reveals persistent differences between EU15 and CE countries and even much larger differences between these groups of countries and the countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia (the EECCA countries). The data show that the material efficiency (aggregated natural resources used for GDP generation) of the EU-12 is on average 23 times higher than in the EU-15 and EFTA countries; however, it is still 35 times less than in the EECCA countries. As the “Environment for Europe” process of the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the latest pan-European evidence suggest, the EU countries differ markedly from the other countries of the European Region and the improvement process will take much longer there.17,18 All the New Countries of CE have made very significant progress toward a clean environment. Thus, while we may see convergence among them in most aspects of environmental protection, we may also see some convergence of the development
process among the “new” and “old” EU countries in many areas, e.g., biodiversity, land use, protected areas, municipal air quality, etc. Large cities with quite similar air qualities may be found in both WE and CE. On average, the environmental situation in many key phenomena in the New Countries is to a certain extent close to the old ones so that the current 27 members of the EU can be seen as a rather homogeneous bloc.
’ AUTHOR INFORMATION Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]; phone: þ420 220199475; fax: þ420 251 620 441.
’ BIOGRAPHY Bedrich Moldan was the first Minister of Environment of the Czech Republic (1990) and a Senator of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, and is now Professor at Charles University in 3827
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Prague. He has been Director of the Environment Center since its foundation in 1992. His experience includes research on indicators of sustainable development and science-policy linkage issues. He has held various international positions such as Chairman of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-9, 2001) and Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (20002006). Tomas Hak has been teaching indicators of environmental sustainability and quality of life at Charles University, as well as conducting national and international research and projects in this field for the past 15 years.
’ ACKNOWLEDGMENT Work on this article was supported by project 205/08/1475 of the Czech Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. The TOC image of a Eurasian lynx courtesy of: Copyright 2002 Andreas Tille. Permission for use granted under the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2., and the Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike License, Version 3.0. Content accessed from http:// fam-tille.de/norwegen/numedal/2003a_022.html. ’ REFERENCES (1) Carson, R. Silent Spring; Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA, 1962. (2) Meadows, D., Randers, J., Meadows, D. Limits to Growth; Universe Books: New York, 1972. (3) Vanek, M. Nedalo se tady dychat (It was not breathable here in Czech); Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Maxdorf: Prague, 1996. (4) Moldan, B., et al. Environment of the Czech Republic. Evaluation, Statistic and Trends to the End of the Year 1989; Academia: Prague, 1990. (5) Common Report on Air Quality in the Black Triangle Region 2001; Czech Hydrometeorological Institute: Prague, 2001. (6) Renner, E. the Black Triangle Area - Fit for Europe? Numerical Air Quality Studies for the Black Triangle Area. Ambio 2002, 31 (3), 231–235; 10.1579/0044-7447-31.3.231. (7) Statistical Environmental Yearbook of the Czech Republic 2008; Ministry of Environment and CENIA: Prague, 2009. (8) Moldan, B.; Hak, T. Environment in the Czech Republic: A Positive and Rapid Change. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2007, 41 (2), 359–362. (9) Moldan, B.; Schnoor, J. L. Czechoslovakia examining a critically ill environment. Environ. Sci. Technol. 1992, 26 (1), 14–21. (10) Bramwell, A. Ecology in the 20th Century: A History; International Environmental History, a series published by the Rachel Carson Center in collaboration with ESEH; Berghahn Books: New York/ Oxford, 1989. (11) Jenkins, T. The changing face of central and Eastern Europe and the role of the environmental movement. Eur. Environ. 1991, 1 (4), 1–4. (12) Klarer, J., Moldan, B., Eds. The Environmental Challenge for Central European Economies in Transition; Wiley: Chichester, 1997. (13) Eschenbach, F.; Hoekman, B. Services Policy Reform and Economic Growth in Transition Economies, 19902004. The World Bank, Policy working paper No. WPS3663; stored 7.Nov.2005. (14) The Environment in the Czech Republic 19892004; Czech Environmental Information Agency: Prague, 2005. (15) OECD in Figures 2009; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: Paris, 2009. (16) State of the Environment Report, Czech Republic, 2008; Ministry of Environment and CENIA: Prague, 2009. (17) Europe’s Environment: The Fourth Assessment; European Environment Agency: Copenhagen, 2007. (18) Kovanda, J. Economy-wide material flow indicators: overall framework, purposes and uses and comparison of material use and resource intensity of the Czech Republic, Germany and the EU-15. Ecol. Indic. 2011, in press. 3828
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