Second Environmental Performance Review of Albania

Chapter 4: Implementation of international agreements and commitments63and accountability for international cooperation in theenvironmental sector remain insufficient. The cultureof information-sharing and communication inrelation to the activities of international cooperationon the environment leaves a great deal to be desired.Interested stakeholders are not always engaged inMEA implementation processes.Recommendation 4.1:The Government should:(a) Establish an advisory body to theGovernment representing all relevantstakeholders to strengthen coordination andprovide more opportunities formainstreaming global environmentalconcerns into national planning anddevelopment;(b) Reorganize the National Council for Natureand Biodiversity, and the NationalCoordination Board for Land Degradation.Recommendation 4.2:The Ministry of Environment, Forests and WaterAdministration should regularly update its website byuploading:(a) The texts of various multilateralenvironmental agreements (MEAs) and mostrecent reports on their implementation;(b) Regular reports on the status ofimplementation of internationalcommitments.There is a tendency to concentrate efforts on adoptingnew legislation while implementation is still fallingbehind. No compliance assessment has ever beendone for an MEA. Consequently, MoEFWA has onlya very general understanding of where it stands withthe implementation of international commitments.Not all MEAs have designated focal points inAlbania, and there is no mechanism ofcommunication among focal points.Several MEAs’ national focal points were changedand their tasks re-allocated to new persons who didnot have the necessary experience to carry out thejob. Sometimes this resulted in a decrease in capacityto manage Albania’s international obligations on theenvironment.On the other hand, there are cases in which severalfocal point functions are attributed to a single person,which results in an excessive workload which, inturn, affects MEA implementation, and is alsoreflected in the failure to meet important obligationsunder multilateral agreements, such as reporting.Recommendation 4.3:The Ministry of Environment, Forests and WaterAdministration should adopt a more comprehensiveand systematic approach to its internationalcooperation efforts, requiring:(a) Strengthening contacts between MEAs’ focalpoints, and conducting regular reviews of thestatus of implementation of Albania’sobligations under various MEAs;(b) Identifying areas of synergy between relatedMEAs so that excessive institutionalfragmentation is avoided; specifically, a“chemicals bureau” or similar should beestablished to manage chemicals-relatedagreements in a coordinated way;(c) Strengthening administrative capacity forMEAs implementation, essentially byorganizational measures including raisinghuman capacity, retaining qualified staff andpreserving sufficient institutional memory,thus assuring the necessary continuity inwork.The question can be raised whether the intensiveprocess of joining new MEAs and transposing theminto national legislation corresponds to nationalcapacity to implement them, the RIA of new legalrequirements being limited to an assessment of thebudgetary burden on the Government. The capacityof MoEFWA to prepare technical, financial andeconomic analyses in this context is insufficient.Recommendations 4.4:The Government should(a) Strengthen the Regulatory Impact Assessment(RIA) process leading to a more thoroughassessment of the financial, economic, socialand environmental impacts of newinternational commitments and relatedpublic policies and national laws;(b) Ensure that staff members dealing with RIAapplications receive adequate training,especially staff from the Ministry ofEnvironment, Forests and WaterAdministration.Albania has set ambitious objectives to achieve itsMDG-related targets, which were recently tightened,and progress with European integration. This willcertainly require boosting efforts to raise new andlarger-scale financial resources.Recommendations 4.5:The Government should systematically consider howthe country would fulfil its international obligationsin the context of reduced international aid, and aim –within a longer-term perspective – to raise its