Advocacy very "Guta"

Where can public interest lawyers from the region go to exchange ideas, forge cooperative links and receive information to improve their skills as public advocates for environmental change? The place is Guta, a series of annual meetings on environmental advocacy, named after a holiday resort in Ukraine where the first such meeting was held in 1995.

The Guta process has recently focused on the implementation of the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, adopted in Aarhus, Denmark last June. An important need currently raised by many Guta participants is to promote greater cooperation between non-governmental organisations (NGOs), government and industry. The Polish Environmental Law Association, for example, has already coordinated a project on cooperation between environmental authorities and ecological NGOs.

The last Guta conference, held June in Wroclaw, Poland also saw participants move forward with the establishment of the Environmental Law Association of Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States, an organisation institutionalising regular cooperation among environmental lawyers and professionals. Conference participants agreed that potential association activities would include publishing the Environmental Advocacy newsletter, planning Guta conferences, implementing the Aarhus Convention and experience sharing, related mainly to court cases and lobbying techniques.

Contributing to these goals, the REC and the Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI) have created an e-mail discussion list to enable communication on environmental law reform issues. (To subscribe, send e-mail to CEELAW-L@rec.org and, without subject, enter "subscribe" in the body of the message).

The upcoming Guta Five meeting in Yaremcha, Ukraine from June 3-6 will be called Partnership of Environmental Lawyers for the Protection of the Environmental Interests of Citizens from the Countries of CIS, Central and East Europe. Hosted by Ecopravo-Lviv, an environmental public advocacy NGO, Guta Five is expected to adopt a charter and strategy for the newly launched Environmental Law Association.

- Karin M. Krchnak,
Director, Environmental Law Program, American Bar Association/CEELI

CEE forestry legislation

The Legal Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recently completed a survey entitled Trends in Forestry Legislation: Eastern and Central Europe. The publication forms a chapter of a larger two-volume study on world-wide trends in forestry legislation that is being prepared by the Legal Office in collaboration with the FAOÕs Forest Policy and Planning Division.

The survey finds that many CEE countries (Albania, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovenia) have adopted new forestry legislation since the political changes of the early 1990s. The study offers a brief examination of the reasons behind this rapid replacement and the constraints that such reforms have encountered. The relationship between domestic legislative reforms and recent international developments is briefly discussed, before surveying in greater detail six principal issues and their incorporation into the regionÕs emerging legislation. Topics surveyed include: sustainable development of forests; privatisation and private forests; forest management; forest utilisation; community forestry and law enforcement; and an inventory of current forestry legislation in each country. The article is available in PDF format at <http://www.fao.org/Legal/default.htm>, or in electronic/ hardcopy formats from the FAO Legal Office, FAO, 00100, Rome, Italy, E-mail: dev-law@fao.org.

Estonian Waste Act passed

The Estonian Parliament passed its new Waste Act early last June, annulling the previous Waste Act of 1992. It details the general requirements for preventing waste generation, limiting hazardous waste and its threat to health and the environment and the organisation of waste management practices.

Its objectives to reduce levels of waste and its hazardous properties are to be achieved largely through the development of waste management plans at national, county and municipal levels, the issuance of waste permits and the adoption of preventative measures (such as the use of waste recovery technologies). In a bid to improve informational transparency, responsibility is also assigned for the recording, reporting and registration of waste levels and practices in a national waste register that is open to the public. Supervisory responsibilities and potential liability are also determined.

Consistent with EU Directives on waste and hazardous waste, the new law does not apply to radioactive waste (covered by the 1997 Law on Radiation) or wastewater, and proposes the establishment of lists of waste categories, waste types and hazardous wastes through separate regulations. In all other respects (definition of waste and hazardous waste, principles and hierarchy of waste management, and requirements for waste management plans, waste permits and hazardous waste management licenses), the new act corresponds to EU legislation. The act entered into force on Dec. 1 1998. English language copies are available from the REC.