UNMIK/FR/034/01
FEATURE RELEASE - 11 May 2001

Environment
Regulation links development with environmental impact

How to build up essential infrastructure and exploit natural resources without destroying the environment at the same time? Administrations the world over, from Alaska to Zambia, face the same problem. So, increasingly, will Kosovo. 
Better infrastructure and thriving industry mean more jobs and better living standards.  In the struggle for them, environmental concerns frequently get lost-especially, it turns out, in planned economies like that in Kosovo of the past, even though on paper their environmental standards were as good as any. 

For Kosovo's economy of today to become more self-sustaining, large-scale projects will certainly be needed to develop infrastructure and industry. But they have to be environmentally sustainable as well-and it is just such projects, worries the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), that often carry with them significant environmental side-effects.  The key to their sustainability, DEP maintains, is a balance between the development they bring and the short and long-term impact they have on the environment. Properly planned, development projects need not and should not carry with them substantial, detrimental luggage: hence DEP's new draft regulation.

The framework the regulation will set up is designed to ensure that economic development does not cause significant further deterioration of Kosovo's already damaged environment. It stipulates that any entity wishing to mount a large-scale project must undertake an assessment of the environmental impact prior to beginning work.  It must also receive separate approval to begin the work, undertake its own environmental impact monitoring, and allow outside monitoring while the work is in progress.

The Regulation combines Yugoslavian and European law, explains Jorge Flores Lamas, a DEP Environmental Officer.  It will make mandatory the environmental impact assessments that foreign investors and developers often make voluntarily.

Avoiding past mistakes
In the drive to industrialize, previous authorities, like many other socialist governments, encouraged exploitation of resources and pushed production with little concern for environmental consequences. Today, most mining works, power production and large industries in Kosovo do not adhere to even minimal European standards. While steps are now being taken by the interim administration to improve the situation, sheer availability of electrical power and concern over jobs have so far had to have priority over environmental concerns. What DEP is trying to do through the new regulation is ensure that at least all new projects, where by definition existing jobs are not at risk, meet minimum acceptable standards.

The regulation requires developers to submit Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reports, prepared by experts, to the (Central or Local) Planning Authority and the DEP. Their project application will then be scrutinised and approved or refused on environmental grounds. The detailed EIA must describe and assess the direct and indirect short-, medium- and long-term effects of the project on the following: human health and quality of life, fauna and flora, soil, water and air, climate and landscape, and Kosovo's the cultural heritage and monuments.
   
Projects include construction, installation of industrial plants, infrastructure and transport projects, extraction activities, agricultural and forestry development, or any other human intervention in the natural surroundings. They therefore include, but are not limited to: airports, motorways, railway lines, thermal power stations,  metallurgical and metalworking plants, dams, installations for the processing, storage, and final disposal of radioactive material, waste disposal installations, wastewater treatment plants, quarries, mining or gravel/peat extraction, and urban development projects.
    
The way ahead   
Although this Regulation will apply only to new projects, DEP is also developing a larger, more encompassing regulation on environmental standards. The aim is to ensure that large complexes like Trepca, which currently are not releasing as much pollution as normal, because they are inactive, would become subject to the new environmental standards when they restart. Under it, for example, Kosovo's main power plants, a major source of air pollution, would have to install filters and scrubbers.

Developing the economy, while adhering to European standards, is a challenge being faced by most countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In one way, Kosovo is fortunate: its infrastructure and industries were ignored for so long, in many cases they have to be rebuilt from scratch. It is invariably cheaper and more effective to build environmental protection into grass roots projects than to apply 'end of pipe' solutions to existing systems.  The immediately forthcoming regulation, when put into force, will ensure that new projects do not further damage Kosovo's environment, and will, instead, help to facilitate rather than impede Kosovo's integration into Europe. 
 
Note for Editors
For a selection of photographs, please contact Mr. Ky Chung at 038 504-604 ext. 5467

Contact: David Kahrmann
(038) 504 604 Ext. 5589
E-mail: kahrmann@un.org