Weekly Briefing, Vol. 26, No. 1 (LT), February 2020
Environmental pollution incidents create the momentum for increasing regulatory oversight in Lithuania
The new year in Lithuania’s domestic politics started with the fallout from the industrial environmental pollution incident, which wrong-footed the government and brought under scrutiny the public governance in environmental protection. The incident involved the major cardboard manufacturing company Grigeo Klaipėda which was dumping untreated wastewater containing heavy metals into the Baltic Sea, off the port city of Klaipėda, right under the nose of the environmental protection bodies, as reported by the media. The governmental authorities responsible for enforcing the prevention of such pollution and waste incidents became the subject of public scrutiny and legal investigation as well as the company, which caused the environmental hazard under such scandalous circumstances.
It is the second environmental pollution incident over the last half-a-year, which brought the attention of the politicians and the public-at-large to the ominous deficiencies of ecological protection and prevention in the country. The first one was a massive fire at the tire recycling facility in Alytus in October; it took more than a weak to extinguish the fire with dire consequences for the local economy and the inhabitants due to the contamination of land and air as a result of the incident.
Below is an overview of the main issues related to the recent industrial pollution incidents linking them to the broader problems related to the public governance in this policy domain and trying to explain some of the more fundamental causes which impact the environmental protection system in the country.
Environmental concerns had played a crucial role in Lithuania’s politics in the past. They helped, for example, rallying up the population for the cause of the sovereignty and independence of the country during the final years of the Soviet rule in Lithuania. One of the first mass protest actions which saw the ecology coupled with the national identity issues was related to the environmental concerns about the levels of waste in the Baltic Sea. On 3 September 1988, some 100 thousand people from around the country gathered on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Lithuania to create a chain of people by holding their hands to express their support for ecology and politics of national sovereignty. Many ecology activists have later become the political leaders.
Reflecting on the political importance of ecology for the nationhood of the country and due to the urgency of dealing with the Soviet legacy of environmental pollution, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania in 1990 established the Environmental Protection Department as a separate institution directly subordinated to the Parliament.
In 1994 the Department was merged with the Ministry of Construction and Urbanism to create the Ministry of Environmental Protection only to be reshuffled in 1998 into the Ministry of Environment invested with a wide range of functions from overseeing the urban planning to protecting wildlife. As a result of these institutional changes, the regulatory oversight of environmental policies has gradually lost its political urgency as it became institutionalized as part of the ministry with a broad portfolio of responsibilities.
Due to the interests of a wide range of stakeholders, the Ministry of Environment has become the ministry with the highest turnover of the ministers – altogether, twelve politicians from nine different political parties or political groupings have been at the helm of the ministry since 1998. The governance here has faced a typical principal-agent problem on how to structure incentives so that people placed in control over resources as part of their public duty to perform that would use these resources in the interest of the state rather than stakeholders or other actors in this policy domain.
In response to the environmental incidents, Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nausėda has demonstrated a high sense of understanding for ecology and the need to improve the governance of environmental protection. He was born and spent in his early years in Klaipėda (the city of the most recent environmental incident and the historical ecology protest actions); has the first-hand experience of those issues. The President has taken a personal role in addressing the challenge, calling the institutions involved to take responsibility and increase regulatory oversight.
To bring more urgency into the matter, the President engaged the Special Investigation Service, an independent anti-corruption institution accountable to the President and the Parliament, to provide advice and recommendations on how to improve the situation in the public governance in the given domain. “I see the efforts to reform the environmental protection system, but the positive changes should take place faster. The system should be made transparent, according to the recommendations of the security services”, – stated the President in the wake of the environmental incident in Klaipėda.
“We agreed at the meeting that incidents in Alytus and Klaipėda proved that the environmental protection system does not function. The Environmental Protection Department has no will and no vision in tackling challenges. It may be said that the environmental protection system often protects offenders rather than nature,” Chief Adviser to the President on Environment and Infrastructure Jaroslav Neverovič said on the record.
The involvement of the Special Investigation Services in addressing the public governance of environmental policies is an important precedent. It shows that environmental protection becomes once again closely linked to the interests of national security and nationhood. Until recently, it was the European Commission and its institutions such as the European Environmental Agency, which have driven the process of environmental policymaking and implementation EU-wide. The national bodies have exercised the controls on the ground.
The research has shown that EU integration has had a very positive impact on environmental policies in the new EU Member States, such as Lithuania, by exerting a strong influence on the environmental interests of regulated industries. For example, the study of chemical safety and air pollution policies of the EU Accession countries from 1990 to 2000 have shown that export-competitive industries such as the chemical industry which benefitted from economic integration had more readily adopted EU norms. By contrast, industries such as electric utilities or others that primarily serve the domestic market were less incentivized to adapt EU environmental standards and had to be more pushed by the governments to implement environmental protection measures. The lack of incentives of specific industries to embrace the environmental protection whole-heartedly coupled with the deficiencies in the environmental protection governance system led to the increased environmental risks, and ominous public hazards as the latest incidents have shown.
During the period of the EU membership since 2004, Lithuania has made a significant leap in institutionalizing environmental policies. According to the 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), prepared jointly by Yale University and Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, Lithuania is ranked above most of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The EPI ranks 180 countries on 24 performance indicators across ten issue categories covering environmental health and ecosystem vitality to provide a gauge at a national scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals. The EPI ranks Lithuania quite high as 29th (having the EPI score – 69.33) above of Estonia (EPI score – 64.31), Hungary (EPI score – 65.01), Czech Republic (EPI score – 67.68) and slightly below Slovakia (70.6). To compare, the environmentally-conscious Denmark has an EPI score of 81.6.
However, in order to implement environmental protection at full, there needs to be support for that in society – not only the responsible institutions alone. Nevertheless, despite the institutionalization of the policies, Lithuania’s society has been slow in adopting the environmental mindset. According to the 2018 Eurobarometer survey, Lithuanians do not recognize climate change as necessary, particularly compared to citizens of more affluent and more environmentally-minded EU countries.
The recent study (Balundė et al., 2019) has shown that people’s environmental considerations, as expressed through their pro-environmental behavior are based on the so-called biospheric values (related to caring about nature and environment protection), and environmental self-identity. The pro-environmental behavior is defined as all possible actions aimed at avoiding harm to and, or safeguarding the environment, either performed in public (for example, by participating in environmental movements, public clean-up actions, or other environmental-awareness raising activities) or privately.
The researchers explain that an important factor that could explain the relationship between biospheric values and pro-environmental behavior is environmental self-identity. Environmental self-identity reflects the degree to which a person thinks of himself or herself as an individual who acts in an environmentally friendly manner. The environmental self-identity has manifested in participation in the community clean-up activities involving collecting waste in public space and a more conscious behaviour related to the prevention and the monitoring of the environment by the citizens themselves.
According to the 2019 EU Environmental Implementation Review country report for Lithuania, Lithuania has achieved significant progress regarding waste management, as it halved its landfilling rate from 2014 to 33 % (still above the EU average of 25 %). Recycling and composting (48 %) have become the primary treatment option, slightly above the EU average of around 46 %. Though waste recycling remains a challenge, Lithuania is on its way to reach the 2020 recycling target. By and large, it will depend on how effectively the society and the governmental institutions with support of the political actors will be preventing and protecting the environment in the country from the potential sources of industrial pollution through the untreated waste.
References:
- lt, BNS, “Public outcry as Grigeo plant admits polluting Curonian Lagoon”, 10 Jan. 2019; https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1132043/public-outcry-as-grigeo-plant-admits-polluting-curonian-lagoon
- Liliana B. Andonova, Transnational Politics of the Environment: The European Union and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe, MIT Press, 2003.
- Gorazd Meško et al, „Chapter 3: Situational Crime-Prevention Measures to Environmental Threats“, Understanding and Managing Threats to the Environment in South Eastern Europe, eds. G.Meško, D.Dimitrijevic, C.B.Fields, NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security, Springer, 2011, 41-68; DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-0611-8_1
- Audra Balundė, Goda Perlavičiūtė, Linda Steg, „The Relationship Between People’s Environmental Considerations and Pro-environmental Behavior in Lithuania”, Psychol., 15 October 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02319
- European Commission, The EU Environmental Implementation Review 2019: Country Report – Lithuania, SWD(2019) 125 final; https://ec.europa.eu/environment/eir/pdf/report_lt_en.pdf