Functional Review of the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning

determine the charges for public utility services 1 . It will be necessary to develop and implement a strategy
for sustainable financial and administrative management of public utilities. It will be important to assist
centrally and, in the above mentioned very practical ways, support the municipalities in their effort to
adequately manage public utility service delivery.
Recommendation III.4: Develop state-wide policy on delegated management and financing of the water,
waste-water and solid waste sectors
A further shortcoming of departments described is that it makes insufficient use of economic and fiscal
policies. Specifically:
1. An economically-socially feasible and balanced policy package is missing in respect of payments
for services provided by the environment sector.
2. The policy for use of economic instruments ought to be amplified, so as:
a) to really modify the behaviour of people and institutions towards better environmental protection
by providing incentives for reduction of pollution and
b) to raise sizeable revenue for investment in environmental quality improvement.
At present some economic instruments exist and work to some extent, for example charges and fees for
drinking water management. Others are not working at all; for example no charges are being collected
from enterprises for the emission of air pollutants or discharging waste water. Their performance is not
monitored. Basically the institutional capacity is weak for running an effective and forceful policy.
The key principles that ‘users pay’ and ‘polluters pay’, both commonly used through the whole EU, will be
a must for the further international donors’ aid programmes.
Recommendation III.5: Adopt the economic instruments for collecting the charges from industries for the
emission of air pollutants and discharging the waste waters.
These instruments are, of course, absolutely different from the penalties or other penalizations imposed for
the pollution of environmental media. Either environmental administration will be capable enough to arrange
for economic instruments to protect the sector on one hand, and to create sectoral income on the other, or
this sector will be unable to cope with the financial challenges and remain a problem sector for the long-term.
This recommendation is closely tied with the recommendation 11.
III.1.5 The public information function
The public information function and cooperation with environmental NGOs are the tasks of the
Environmental Protection Department.
The provisions of the Aarhus Convention grant every citizen the right of free access to information and the
right to participate in environmental decision-making. Government offices recognise their duties regarding
the public information function (Art 57 of the Law on Environmental Protection). This is demonstrated by
the reportedly high rate of non-payment of municipal fees, inappropriate waste-disposal and little scrutiny
of the public-private bodies responsible for aspects of environmental management. The general public
does not understand that private society could and should be an ally of the public administration in
enforcement of order and the law. Public responsibility for the environment is not well developed and
public interest for environmental issues is low. This is also reflected in the coverage of these issues in the
media.
The number of local environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Kosovo is 30, with 2878
members in total. According to the Regional Environmental Centre’s (REC) database of environmental
NGOs (2007), the five top priorities of Kosovo NGOs are:
1 Only 65-70% of the total population has access to the drinking water and 28-30 % is connected to the sewage network (data from
2005). There is no one wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in the whole of Kosovo (in four small-size municipalities are being built
only recently by EAR support).
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