Priorities of Minister of the Environment Pavel Drobil: An environment for the people

Press release: 22.07.2010

At a press conference, the Minister of the Environment, Pavel Drobil, described the priorities of the Ministry. The main topics on which he intends to focus include four principal areas – the air, nature, water and the economy.

AIR – Breathe easier

Regulation of air pollution sources, particularly in areas suffering from the greatest pollution, is an important measure aimed at improving air quality. The regional and local regulatory rules which are currently being prepared will therefore be extended, so as to enable identification of specific municipalities and specific sources that should be subject to regulation during adverse dispersion conditions and poor air quality.

In addition to regulatory measures, the Ministry of the Environment also offers financial support. An extraordinary call for bids will be published in the autumn within Priority Axis 2 of the Operational Programme “Environment”, focusing on projects to reduce the pollution levels caused by combustion sources and to reduce the quantities of emissions and dust. The call will be intended not only for the public sector, but also for businesses.

The process of submission of applications to the Programme of Swiss-Czech cooperation related to grants for the renewal and refurbishment of the infrastructure, improvement of the environment and an increase in energy efficiency and improvement of air quality was closed last Friday. The projects in question included, for example, projects of construction of CNG stations, refurbishment of terminals, a change in the fuels used in public transit systems and purchase of filters for diesel engines used in city buses. A total of 48 projects were accepted.

The Ministry will submit an amendment to the Air Protection Act, which will authorize the Government to issue regulations stipulating emission ceilings either for a group of sources or for all sources in a territory where human health is most endangered by air pollution.

“I will strive to adopt as many effective measures as possible to improve air quality in the Moravian-Silesian Region”, says the Minister, Pavel Drobil, on the topic of air quality.

NATURE – Return parks to the people

Throughout Europe, national parks protect the most valuable parts of local nature, which have both scientific and educational importance. However, at the same time, they should serve the people and help municipalities and regions to increase their attractiveness through environmentally sound tourism and the presentation of history and regional specificities. If national parks create opportunities for the local population and small businesses, they will, in turn, be motivated to ensure sound management of specific natural and landscape features that are unique for the particular area. Nature and the population must co-exist. “The Ministry aims to open parks to the people,” says the Minister of the Environment Nature conservation inherently encompasses soil conservation. Soil is an extraordinarily valuable and non-renewable part of nature, which has been disappearing throughout the entire world. Uncontrolled development and the use of high-quality agricultural land for other purposes deprives the Czech agricultural land fund of 15 ha of land every day.

WATER – Part of the landscape

The increasingly frequent and recurring floods demonstrate that this danger needs to be envisaged in the future and that it is particularly necessary to find ways of avoiding it. Besides improving and maintaining the good condition of the forecast service and cooperation within the rescue system, it is necessary to implement permanent measures in the landscape. It is essential to increase its retention capacity and to build systems of anti-flood measures suitable for each specific area.

At the same time, people in the affected locations must be provided with material assistance and prepared for potential changes in the territory. Financial means must be directed towards anti-flood measures and also towards projects concerned with reducing the risk of floods, improving the state of nature and the landscape and preventing landslides. The Ministry of the Environment thus supports these measures in the long term within the Operational Programme “Environment”. Moreover, recently – after the spring floods that hit the Czech Republic – it increased the intensity of publishing calls for applications in this area and also offered the affected regions certain means of relief in the form of deferring instalments or increasing bonuses.

“We must strive to ensure that water is available where it is required – that it helps to keep the landscape alive and fertile at times when it’s lacking and that it is not detrimental at times when it’s abundant,” notes Minister Pavel Drobil in this respect.

ECONOMY – Green light for economy

The Ministry will promote simplification and reduction of superfluous administrative requirements on business entities. It follows from an analysis drawn up by the Ministry of the Environment in 2008 that only 3 % of the representative sample of almost 9,000 businesses produced a total of 80 % of the overall pollution. It is thus especially regulation of smaller entities – small and medium-sized businesses – that play only a negligible role in terms of environmental pollution, which appears to be ineffective in the overall view. The Ministry of the Environment has therefore been preparing simplification of the entire system and reduction of the number of entities subject to regulation within the contemplated amendments to the Air Protection Act.

In addition to their environmental effect, environmental technology and innovations also provide an important incentive for the economy. The Ministry of the Environment will thus promote them by a number of measures, aimed particularly at utilising these products in public tenders.

The Ministry of the Environment will support the construction of transport infrastructure that will divert transit transport away from city centres by means of by-passes, while increasing the smoothness of transport and reducing air pollution. To accelerate the construction of the transport and energy-production infrastructure, the Ministry of the Environment will minimize the periods of discussing individual decisions and opinions in the area of its competence, including the EIA documents, and will actively collaborate with other entities involved in the preparation of transport structures, so that solutions that satisfy the requirements following from sectoral environmental laws are available as soon as possible. In the area of energy production, the Ministry of the Environment will support primarily effective and environmentally sustainable forms of renewable energy sources, particularly in the provision of subsidies for renewable energy sources within its subsidy programmes, i.e. the Operational Programme “Environment” and the Green Investment Scheme (Zelená úsporám). In the preparation of an amendment to the Act on Support for Renewable Energy Sources, which falls within the competence of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of the Environment will support a variant that will secure future development of promising and effective energy sources in the Czech Republic, so as to minimize the impact on the prices of electricity for final customers.

“It is now necessary to reset the system so that it corresponds to the actual state of affairs in energy production; we will support the nuclear programme, while taking account of the need to ensure maximum safety, and also make support for the use of renewable energy sources more realistic,” says Minister Drobil in describing the last of his priorities. “We can attain all these priorities only if the Ministry operates in a professional way without an ideological bias,” says Mr. Drobil in concluding the presentation of the priority topics.

Photographs from the press conference of the Minister of the Environment, Pavel Drobil, are available here.

Eva Veverkova, Press Office of the MoE