Project “Corruption in environment protection”

Why is an ecological organization interested in bribery in environment protection? Shouldn’t it be the case for penal prosecution agencies only? Is a social organization able to change something? Let’s try to answer these questions.

From February till November 2008 the Society for Earth realized the project “Corruption in environment protection”. We took under consideration both legal and moral aspect of the problem (“eco –tributes”), because we have no doubts that bribery decreases the efficiency of environment protection. Because of corruption environmental conditions improve slower than they should or even change for the worse.

Individual people or groups of dwellers come to us with problems concerning threats for local environment almost every day (we are realizing the project supporting local communities in such situations). It wouldn’t happen if the organs of government did their duty properly. But unfortunately they don’t. The reasons are of course complicated - bribery is not always the cause of the problem. Sometimes incompetence or simply in insufficient number of clerks is the problem . However we believe that bribery is indeed one of the greatest causes.

Unfortunately we know the problem of corrupting or rather trying to bribe organization from our own lives. Here’s the example that took place a few months ago. In October 2008 members of the Association realized a workshop in Walce community in Opolskie county (in frames of a project “Support for local communities endangered by investments that can be harmful for environment”). The dwellers of Walce feel endangered by the plan of building a windmill farm. It occurred that the investment that is needed and aimed at climate protection can in fact be burdensome, especially when it’s located near houses. The workshop was organized to give people objective information about threats connected with windmill farms as well as to prepare locals for participation in procedures concerning investment and for defending their rights. When it occurred that the investor decided to take part in it we were a little confused at first but later we thought that it would be the chance for him to present the investment and to answer questions about it. But in fact he didn’t want to. Instead we heard that we were invited to the investor’s seat where we could have a talk. Why didn’t he want to talk in public and in presence of media is to be guessed by the readers of this text. Probably he didn’t have all the documents. And why did village-mayor do whatever he could in order not to let the Association take part in the legal case? Why had the investor known about the refusal before we got the decision about it?  A little bit too many strange situations…

The main part of the project was to identify occasions for corruption and to work out the ways of eliminating them. With other organizations that took part in the project we concluded that cases concerning cutting trees in cities, environmental risk assessments, acquisition of gravel from river beds and arranging for urban cleanliness are the ones most exposed to bribery. At the same time in Gdynia a clerk was arrested on a charge of corruption while deciding on admittance for a tree cut. To be precise, the clerk decided about the exception from the fee for cutting trees. The case ensured us that our guesses about the most common corruption occasions were 100% right.

During the project realization, basing on available documents, we analyzed some of bribery fields and, where possible, we proposed suitable solutions. For example for Environmental Impact Assessments we insisted on coming back to accreditation (record) of experts allowed to do them and on creating a system for their work verification with a possibility of being excluded of the record when unreliable or unfair. We were close to success as some members of Parliament  (PO) working on the bill On Access To Information About Environment, Its Protection, Social Participation In Environment Protection And Environmental Impact Assessments accepted our proposal. It was also accepted by the minister of Environment. Unfortunately the amendment was finally rejected as a result of PSL members’ objections.

It is clear that easy access to public information and public control is one of the most important factors limiting corruption. Unfortunately the situation in this field is far from being good and we confirmed ourselves about that once again during the project realization. A lot of departments wouldn’t have facilitated access to information if not impeded it. Leaving applications without any answer, not meeting deadlines, incomplete or evasive answers and very high fees for data finding and processing were common. In addition to that current laws were often arbitrarily interpreted. I want to give only one extreme example: Pszczyna District Office refused to give us information about a number of trees let to be cut down, whereas a few dozen of other offices in the whole Poland didn’t see any problem about that. There is a lot of work to do about the access to information. A conclusion is that a clerk who makes access to information difficult and doesn’t publish required information on a website should explain himself to a prosecutor the very next day. The real situation, however, is that the regulation about liability of clerks impeding access to information simple doesn’t work

A conference summarizing the project took place 14th November in Warsaw. Findings of a study on business and corruption in environment protection (especially eco-tributes) were the main topic that raised a lively discussion. It was stated that bribing civil society is a very dangerous phenomenon as it impacts the bases of democracy. We also took under consideration if the fact that one third of respondents knows the word “eco-tribute” proofs that the organizations are bribed, especially when some of them understand it as “ecological taxes” or “paying for ecology”. When they were asked if they ever have had problems while proceeding permits only 20% answered they have among of which only 3 people (form 300) said that the problems were made by ecological organizations. Does it proof of a lack of corruption or does it mean that the investments are ecological or is it the weakness of organizations?

Conference participants stated that paying eco-tributes to a few quasi-ecological organizations brought to light and publicized (initiatives of other NGOs are worth to mention) were to some extend grounded in the situation that occurred in ecological movement about 10 years ago. It was a great limitation of social control rights (abolition of clause 100 of the Act on Environment Protection and Management) on one hand and cutting financing of investment monitoring on the other. As a consequence some organizations regarded being paid for investments approval (often in cases concerning shopping centers building) as justifiable act. The problem was noted by the European Union who gave a considerable amount of many, mainly in frames of Phare Programme,   to support NGOs’ projects regarding social participation (projects “Access”, “Civil Society Development”, “Nongovernmental Organizations for Sustainable Development” or the latest “Social Awareness Increasing And Strengthening A Role Of Nongovernmental Organizations In Advocacy and Monitoring). Batory Found was also a contributor to the projects. Unfortunately it seems like the money for solution this problem has run out and the need for financing monitoring run by ecological organizations has remained unnoticed by our own government. Although the Act on Environment Protection Control states cooperation with NGOs, seeking for such programmes in open competitions organized by Polish environment protection founds is in vain. It seems an urgent need to change the politics of supporting ecological organizations in this field or even to state a law obliging support for monitoring realized by nongovernmental organizations.