Findings of the Regional Report . Access to Information

1. Findings of the Regional Report.Access to Information Marta Strumińska, LKAEM, Poland

2. Introduction TAI partners have assessed access to fourdifferent types of information under the TAI methodology: • Information onemergencies • Information from regular monitoring (ambient air quality and drinking water quality) • State of the Environment reports • Facility level information

3. Cases characteristics 99 cases from 8 countries (except for water management cases that were assessed in 9 countries). Among them: • 19 emergencies with environmental impacts • 13 air quality cases • 14 water quality cases • 17 State of the Environment reports • reports from 35 facilities about their environmental performance

4. Emergencies Kind of emergencies researched: • 4 oil spills into the sea, • 1 gas leakage, • 6 fires (2 forests, 1 landfill, and 3 tanks), • 4 river pollutions, • 3 soil and/or subsurface water pollutions, and • 1 breakage of dam on a river

5. Emergencies Main issue: data provision on environmental and health impact of an accident (during and after an emergency). Main topics: • Specific legal framework • Existence of information • Quality and timeliness of information • Dissemination of information

6. Emergencies: general conclusions • only two indicators reached the highest grade: • the number of recipients receiving information, • the timeliness of the information delivered during an emergency • 12 indicators bottomed • ex post investigation reporting significantly neglected in all countries (in 4 countries there is no mandate to identify this impacts) • serious shortcomings regarding both the content of information during and after an emergency (lack of data on long term impacts) and their distribution (efforts to reach the mass media) • strategic issues such as the quality of information during and after an emergency were below the average

7. Emergencies: general conclusions

8. Emergencies: general conclusions

9. Monitoring Kind of cases researched: • 13 on air monitoring, • 14 on water monitoring. Among them: • 8of large cities (most often the capitals), • 19of medium or small towns.

10. Monitoring Main issue: accessibility and quality of information from monitoring Main topics: • mandate to gather and disseminate information, • number and diversity of monitored parameters, • regularity of monitoring, • information available on the Internet, • timeliness of information collection, disclosure and dissemination.

11. Monitoring: general conclusions • the environmental monitoring systems are not just existing but quite well functioning elements of the environmental protection regimes in the assessed countries • Limited accessibility due to small number of informtion sources and lack of diversity of information products • there are no interpretation aides for the public in order to understand the health impacts of environmental phenomena and the health implications of environmental data (e.g. data to general or to specific)

12. Monitoring: general conclusions

13. State of Environment Reports Kind of cases researched: • 14 of the reports were produced in or after 2000 • 3 of them date earlier than 2000

14. SoE Reports Main issue:active information provision: publication of analyses based on monitoring data, in order to identify trends and make conclusions about main pollution sources, most polluted areas, etc. Main topics: • mandate to disseminate to the public and mandate to produce SOE reports, • number of SOE reports published in the last 10 years, • volumes of SOE reports available on the Internet, • quality of information accessible to public SOE reports.

15. SoE: general conclusions

16. SoE: general conclusions • SOE reports are overall good quality publications, in most cases easily accessible to the public at large • Neither their content nor the frequency of their preparation or their dissemination channels is harmonized with real public demands

17.  chemical industry (9),  energy production (7),  food processing (4),  car manufacture (2),  forestry (2),  cement production (2),  paper and pulp production (2),  agriculture (1),  mining (1),  alcohol production (1)  water supply (1) FacilitiesKind of cases researched:

18. Facilities Main issue:accessibility and the quality of the environmental information on facility level (compliance and PRTR) Main topics: • Legal framework, • Existence of information, • Quality and timelines of information, • Dissemination on information

19. Facilities: general conclusions

20. Facilities: general conclusions • data available are very recentBUT they are general, fragmentary and delivered in a form which prevents lay people from understanding their meaning • A clear mandate to elaborate compliance reports accessible to the public exists only in 3 (Estonia, Portugal, Lithuania) among the 8 investigated countries. • In most cases existing regulations do not allow broad claims of confidentiality, although in the course of research, abuse of the claims made by a public authority and/or facilities were pointed out • The largest shortcoming of nearly all the countries studied seems to be a lack of publicly accessible pollution inventories or registers, where performance of a single facility could be checked out • Lack of dissemination activities

21. Access to Information: general conclusions and recommendations • EMERGENCIES: Diagnosis: the importance of emergency information including assessment of environmental and health impacts is underestimated by the law and neglected in practice Recommendation:  information on health and environmental consequences is needed  immidiate delivery of this information to the public

22. Access to Information: general conclusions and recommendation • MONITORING Diagnosis: system of gathering and disseminating information is working well, although it seems not to meet special needs of the public. Recommendation: • Transformation of raw data produced by monitoring into comprehensible environmental information (understandable by the public) • Wide and regular dissemination (possibility to undertake actions) • Different formats of information

23. Access to Information: general conclusions and recommendation • SoE Diagnosis: similar as in case of monitoring. Additionally it was observed that mandates to produce and disseminate reports are unclear. Recommendations: • Need of regularity (comparativeness) • Clear mandates to product and to disseminate reports • Accomodation of reports language and content to public needs and receptiveness

24. Access to Information: general conclusions and recommendation • FACILITY Diagnosis: there are difficulties with assessing overall performance of facilities due to shortcomings in regulations and general and fragmentary form of information delivered Recommendation: • Setting up clear and direct regulations (including rules of confidentiality and the format of reporting) • the lack of PRTR-like instruments should be remedied by enforcing the respective provisions of the Aarhus Convention, and by establishing the required emission and transmission inventories on country level.

25. Access to Information: general conclusions and recommendation • As a general recommendation for all assessed areas of access to information: Internet accessibility of data is essential but can not be the exclusively used channel of informing the public