In the latest published status report environment in Serbia, for the year 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency states the constitutionally guaranteed right to timely and complete information about the state of the environment as a principle from which it does not deviate in its work. The Agency carries out data collection, processing and reporting activities "in order to support the environmental protection policy in the Republic of Serbia". At the same time, from individual reports published on the state of air quality, surface water or waste management, we learn that our environment polluted, which is a clear indication that the environmental protection policy in the country of Serbia is of a declarative nature. The most vivid example is waste management.
STATE OF AFFAIRS
Understanding the true state of the environment is a prerequisite for planned waste management. The Law on Waste Management stipulates that each local self-government is obliged to review the report on the implementation of the local waste management plan once a year and to submit the report to the competent authority of the autonomous province, the Ministry and the Agency. The deadline for entering data from Annual Reports into the Information System of the National Register is March 31 of the current year for the previous year.
That the law is not implemented, we read from the Agency's report on waste management in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2011-2022: "Only five municipalities realistically analyze the amount and composition of waste"; "An assessment was made for local governments that did not fulfill their obligations"; "It can be concluded that these data are unrealistic"; "Therefore, all data synthesized from annual reports are extremely unreliable".
These and similar sentences from the report are proof that the government is not really interested in the state of the environment. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the citizens of Serbia do not trust the mechanisms for the full implementation of existing legal acts when it comes to waste management - for example, the potential tailings dump in Jadr.
According to research by the Ecological Center Stanište from Vršac, in 2022 only 40 out of 145 municipalities and cities had valid waste management plans. However, only the City of Belgrade had an adopted report on the implementation of the plan in its territory.
"A logical question arises: how to manage what is not measured and monitored", Dejan Maksimović from Eco-center Stanište told "Vreme", stressing that "the waste management system must be treated as an investment in people's health". Maksimović explains that it is precisely because of the underdeveloped waste management system that citizens have low costs for waste disposal and adds: "What is not taken into account in this calculation are the subsequent costs - for treating people and removing illegal landfills."
THERE IS WHO, BUT IT WILL NOT
That the government at all levels, for a long period of time, does not attach enough importance to planning and environmental protection, we can see from the further monitoring of obligations prescribed by law. Namely, the Assembly of AP Vojovdina is obliged to review and adopt a report on the implementation of regional and local waste management plans on its territory once a year and submit it to the Agency and the competent ministry. Finally, the report on waste management in the territory of the Republic of Serbia is an integral part of the Agency's report on the state of the environment, which is submitted every year to the Parliament of Serbia for consideration and adoption.
From the Assembly of AP Vojovdina, we received a response to the request that they send us the adopted reports on the state of the environment from 2009 onwards (since their annual review and adoption is prescribed by law), that the Assembly of APV is not in possession of the requested documents because "the authorized proponent has not received the material in accordance with Art. 74 of the Law on Waste Management, which could be considered at the session of the Assembly of AP Vojovdina". By looking at the rules of procedure of the APV Assembly, we learn that the authorized proposers are "every deputy, competent committee, parliamentary group, provincial government, local self-government units from the territory of the APV, at least 10.000 voters from Vojvodina or the provincial Protector of Citizens - ombudsman from their jurisdiction". So, there are some, but they won't.
Also, the APV Assembly instructed us that information related to the state of waste management is contained in the annual report on the state of environmental quality, which is issued by the Provincial Secretariat for Urbanism and Environmental Protection (Secretariat). We asked the Secretariat what data it relies on when making annual reports on the state of the environment. Reasoning that according to the law, the competent authority of the autonomous province is obliged to send the Agency quarterly data for the preparation of an annual report that is later adopted by the Parliament of the Republic of Serbia, the Secretariat replied that apart from the reports containing air and noise monitoring data (which they do), They also submit "other data in other areas of environmental protection" to the Agency, which they collect while performing tasks within their jurisdiction. We still don't know what exactly the data is and how it was collected - which was basically our question.
What we know is that Art. 77 of the Law on Environmental Protection stipulates that the Agency's annual report must contain data on the state and changes in the state of the environment obtained by monitoring the appropriate indicators. We checked: the National List of Environmental Protection Indicators includes the area of waste.
"In all areas, during the preparation of the Report on the State of the Environment, data is collected based on the legal obligation to submit data to the Agency," reads the response we received from the Agency. However, as they say, for the purposes of preparing the report, apart from state bodies and professional organizations, they also have "constant communication with local self-governments in order to implement local monitoring of the environment" for a "comprehensive, relevant and up-to-date assessment" of its condition.
"At the session of the Stara Pazova Municipal Assembly, held on September 10, 2024, all SNS councilors voted for the adoption of the budget report for 2023, in which zero dinars were earmarked for waste management and zero for nature protection," he says for " Time" Dr. of Chemical Sciences Stanislava Gorjanović, councilor of the Movement for a Healthy Pazova. "And as of 2020, we do not have a valid Waste Management Plan, nor was the previous one implemented."
WALKING OF WILD LANDFILLS
Gorjanović emphasizes that in the same year 2023, according to data from the report of the Agency on the state of air quality in the Republic of Serbia, the average annual value of PM10 particles in the municipality of Pazova was above the legally prescribed 40 micrograms per cubic meter and raises the question of how this pollution affects children : "Will our local self-government deal with this problem or will they build an adventure park overlooking an unsanitary landfill that smokes 24/7, and in winter put ice on square, to allow children to breathe for free in the most polluted part of the year?!”.
In the "Shadow Report for Chapter 27" for the period January 2021 - March 2022, it is stated that "non-compliance with the Law on Waste Management and accompanying regulations is not adequately sanctioned and prevented, especially when it comes to local self-government units that are responsible for municipal waste management, and which in large numbers, without any consequences, continue the long-standing practice of ignoring regulations. The consequence is the accumulation of waste in wild and unsanitary landfills and the increasing pollution of the environment".
"Even if a local self-government is fined for non-compliance with the Law on Waste Management, the fine will be paid from the budget - that is, with citizens' money," lawyer Sreten Đorđević, a specialist in environmental law, told Vreme.
The Stanište eco-center warns that the irresponsibility of the authorities over a long period of time has collapsed the environmental protection system and put it on the margins of political priorities. In order to improve the situation in that area, they propose that the competent ministry and the provincial Secretariat condition the participation of municipalities and cities in the tenders they announce for co-financing by the existence of local programs and plans related to environmental protection. They also propose that the National Assembly legally prescribe the implementation of the Aarhus Convention and ensure essential and not only formal public participation in the process of creating environmental protection plans and reporting on implemented plans, at all levels of government.
