|
NEW CODE FOR ENVIRO LAW
BY REHAB EL-BAKRY
Environmentalists have given a lukewarm response
to the recent announcement of revised executive regulations for
Environmental Law 4/1994. The updated regulations incorporate lessons
learned over the past decade as well as international accords and
agreements signed by Egypt during the same period.
While the government is under no obligation to revise the executive
regulations, first issued in 1995, the law recommends that they
are reviewed and updated every five years. Doing so now was a smart
move, insists Mohamed Kamal, executive director of the Association
of Enterprises for Environmental Conservation (AEEC), an NGO promoting
sustainable eco-friendly development. “There are trends, both
domestic and international, that have evolved over the past 10 years
that should be reflected in the law’s executive regulations,”
he explains. “For example, the main dialogue 10 years ago
was about pollution reduction. Today’s it’s about pollution
prevention. Our laws have to reflect the same trend.”
Kamal says the push for industrial growth that has taken place over
the past decade requires environmental regulations that are in sync
with Egypt’s industrial policies in order to ensure that industrial
growth does not have a detrimental effect on the environment. “There
has been a push for rapid and heavy industrialization because we
need to increase our production in order to create jobs and grow
the economy,” he notes. “But at the same time, we have
to make sure this growth doesn’t come at the expense of the
environment, which is just as important for the health and well-being
of future generations.”
The new regulations may not be radically different from the previous
set, admits Yasser Sherif, executive director of environment consultancy
firm Environics, but they do offer some upgrades for certain aspects
of the law. One of the most significant changes is a role revision
for the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) that gives
the docile watchdog more teeth.
Sherif explains that when Law 4/1994 was first passed there were
two main schools of thought, one that believed the EEAA should be
empowered to enforce environmental law and another that viewed the
agency solely as a coordinating body between environmental watchdogs
and other authorities that enforce the law. The latter view eventually
won out, which Sherif says left the EEAA in an awkward position.
“There tended to be this oscillation between coordination
as the main job [of the EEAA] versus having the authority to get
things done, but with the risk of stepping on the toes of others.”
While the new executive regulations retain the EEAA’s role
as a coordinating body, Sherif sees a number of indicators that
suggest is has been given more executive authority. “For one
thing, they strengthened the agency’s Environmental Impact
Assessments (EIAs), which were under the previous law referred to
as permits. The problem was there were certain areas that were not
subject to permits, such as New Cairo. This meant that the EEAA
had no ability to assess the environmental impact of anything in
these areas. Under the new executive regulations, EIAs are now classified
as part of the licensing process for everything. This gives the
EEAA more empowerment to assess and regulate.”
The new regulations obligate the EEAA to monitor the environmental
register of companies, which helps the agency keep tabs on the observers,
as well as the offenders, of environmental law. The regulations
make the EEAA’s environmental rulings mandatory for most industries,
whereas previously they were just guidelines, and often ignored.
Meanwhile, the introduction of pollution measurement based on load
requirements as opposed to concentration could limit the amount
of pollutants factories discharge. “Our law regulated emissions
and discharges based on concentration of pollutants per cubic meter.
In essence, what was regulated was the concentration of the pollutants
but not the actual volume of pollutant discharged. Under the new
regulations, there is an actual annual quota for pollution,”
Sherif explains.
Formulating laws is one thing; implementing them is an entirely
different matter and despite good intentions, the government’s
track record has been short of exemplary. Part of the problem, says
Kamal, is that factories were often expected to comply immediately
regardless of whether or not they had the capability or know-how
to do so. International experience, however, suggests that industrial
compliance with environmental regulations is an incremental process.
The revised executive regulations improve the mechanism for enforcing
compliance, notes Sherif. “One of the new tools that we see
in these executive regulations is the creation of something called
the ‘negotiated agreement’,” he says. “This
allows for companies that have not yet come into full compliance
with the standards set in the environmental law to approach the
ministry and negotiate an implementation plan and timeline,”
he explains. The EEAA assesses to what extent the factory has already
complied, then “sets a timeline during which the factory must
fully comply with the law and agree on... a fine to be paid by the
factory if it fails to comply.”
Unfortunately, adds Kamal, the government has spent too much time
on tweaking laws and not enough on changing the culture. “Companies,
factories and people comply not out of real belief that it is their
duty and responsibility to comply but because they fear being punished
or fined or shut down,” he says. “We need to educate
the public to demand that the environment is protected, and we need
industry and businesses to fear not the fine, but the social conscience
of the people.”
Submit
your comment
Top
|
