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5.4Policy support
In the short term, support, a realistic budget, adequate human resources and a good technical understanding of critical water resources issues in MESP are needed for the continuation of Project activities and for improving the protection of river ecology and groundwater.
In other words, the continuation of activities launched during the Project also depends on high-level support from MESP and the Ministry of Finance. The Water Task Force within in the Prime Minister’s Office can play a role in this regard.
Planning process for sustainable development of water projects
In December 2009, in preparation of a water conference organised by MESP and the Task Force Project of the Swiss Cooperation Agency, the Water Department assisted by the Project proposed a planning process for improved and sustainable development of projects in the water sector. This approach shows how national strategies and plans can evolve from a needs assessment at municipal level in conjunction with publicly owned enterprises. It also shows how River Basin District Authorities would contribute through the formulation of River Basin Management Plans, which define environmental objectives and set environmental targets. Screened projects would undergo a rigorous impact assessment before they are cleared and promoted for implementation. This would ensure that both water sector development and environmental protection objectives are fully recognised and integrated.
In the long term and on a broader scale, education and actions to encourage the public and local companies to adopt good practices should be encouraged. For example, preventative action to reduce the number of plastic bottles and metal cans which are thrown away on the street and in the countryside need to be taken. For this to be effective, it is clear that penalties must be introduced to punish wrongdoers. Efficient police can change the landscape.
In Skenderaj, the Project observed that the quality of the technical study to alleviate flooding was poor, which indicates that checks need to be made on the experience and qualification of experts to achieve good results and protect investments. Missing data and insufficient quality control can easily lead to technical errors, which have costly consequences. There should be a strong policy support for careful design and selection of appropriate technology, including sustainable technology with low energy efficiency and low carbon emissions. These policies can easily receive support from donor institutions. In Kosovo, it is sometimes difficult to select adequately experienced people and companies in design work, to closely monitor project implementation and to disregard undesired interferences.
To induce a change of behaviour of polluters, new policies have to be implemented with the following:
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Economic instruments, such as taxes to deter people from polluting and damaging rivers, and investments to remove pollution need to be introduced. The public finances are limited, which creates a very difficult environment for institutional development. The political recognition of the importance of water management issues can contribute to improve this situation. However, institution building requires increased allocation of local funding.
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The information, participation and consultation process to produce planning documents such as the River Basin Management Plan needs to be introduced. These processes are essential to increase public and decision-makers’ awareness on the possible negative impact of certain types of activity development. Broad agreement on a programme of measures to alleviate these impacts is necessary. Elected bodies, officials, company managers, workers, farmers and households have to be convinced that they can contribute to the efforts required in this regard.
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Legal means such as the issue of permits and sanctioning law-breakers are required. A well designed legal body is the basis for efficient organisation of the environmental sector including institutional coordination. Currently, there is a large confusion among the water users about complicated water permit procedures. Moreover, there is a weak capacity within the authorities for a proper administration of water permits as many data are missing. It is not easy to improve the situation. First, the texts ruling permits should be revised in order to facilitate law enforcement. Secondly, the policy to discourage law-breakers at all levels is not yet very successful. Another difficulty is the lack of qualified human resources of institutions to fulfil their responsibilities.
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Educational opportunities to gain the necessary know-how and to act for a better water resource protection have to be developed. Good practices, clean technologies have to be adjusted to Kosovo circumstances.
For many years, it has been difficult for Kosovo Albanians to acquire a proper university scientific background. Furthermore, it was difficult for Albanian employees working in the administration to get high-level positions and so administrative procedures and standards have to be re-established.
Moreover, there is not yet a strong environmental NGO to raise cases and to lobby for better water resource protection. There are also vested interests that might thwart such efforts.
The first step to improve water management is to precisely assess the current situation. To this end, good information is necessary, but accurate and reliable information in the water sector is missing. The Project had to address this issue. The gap between the data needed to make management plans according to EU standards and the available data was wide. Mostly, there were only out-dated information on water resource availability and its status. Good quality information exists for pre-1986 data, and this is useful, but there is little reliable recent hydrological information. There are scattered pockets of data in different institutions. However, generally speaking, data holders have shown little willingness to share their data (e.g. ICMM) or requested unrealistic sums of money for sharing these. These are also major obstacles for improving planning, prioritising and optimising investment as well as for managing the existing water system.
The Project’s first important output was the preparation of a data status report which assessed these information gaps and provided proposals and recommendations to fill these gaps.
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