More information
Description
Towns/villages are facing effects of the climate crisis. The goal is to change selected rules to make adaptation to climate change effective and fair. The project helps to regulate Building Law and related regulations, so that the protection of nature, water management and landscape planning were in conformity with the needs and goals of the adaptation. The target groups are law-makers, ministries, municipalities and NGOs. Partners will guarantee high quality communication with different types of residences, clear public presentation and high expertise of proposals.
Summary of project results
The inhabitants of cities and towns are facing the impacts of the climate crisis: overheating of cities; water shortages, loss of green spaces and drainage areas, irreversible loss of agricultural land.
The necessary legislative changes are slow, inconsistent and in some respects go against the approved concept documents. Environmental protection laws are under constant pressure and face continuous proposals to reduce the level of regulation, citing the need for economic growth and competitiveness. The current recodification of building law, which is currently under preparation, has resigned itself to tackling the climate crisis and subordinates everything to the imperative of speed and centralisation of decision-making. At the same time, the Building Act is the key to solving the problems associated with the encroachment of land and green spaces, it determines decisions on the felling of trees outside the forest and, to a large extent, it also determines the way in which water is managed in the inner city. The preparation of the recodification so far has tended to reduce the protection of public interests, weaken the position of local governments and further reduce public participation in decision-making processes. The recodification of the Building Act is directly related to other laws, decrees and methodologies, which, among other things, define in detail the instruments necessary for adaptation to climate change at the municipal level.
- Improving advocacy skills (training), strategic planning, increasing the number of supporters and strengthening relationships with them - Output: 15 NGO leaders trained in advocacy skills; Green Circle has strategic plan; new partnerships between NGOs
- Consultations with local governments, experts and associations to link practice to legislative proposals - output: draft amendments to laws that local governments support.
- Active discussions with legislators and ministry representatives on specific proposals for changes to laws and decrees. The proposals were prepared by legal experts in cooperation with NGOs. Hundreds of hours were devoted to negotiations over four years.
- Active commenting on other actors'' proposals - we continuously monitored the government and parliament''s agenda, and the proposals submitted by individual ministries for comment. The output is a legislative monitoring updated weekly and published comments and observations.
Thanks to the project, the position of state environmental authorities in the building permitting process was certainly stabilised for the next few years, whereas at the beginning of the project the intention was to de facto exclude these authorities from the permitting process. The second systemic change that has taken place and which will have a measurable impact on the public administration''s decision-making methods is the partial restoration of the right of the public (or associations) to participate in the building permitting process and to make environmental proposals and comments in this process. Both changes will have a positive impact on the environment.
The organizations involved in the project (4 financial partners and 2 non-financial partners) gained new contacts, access to legislative monitoring, better insight into the process of drafting laws and established cooperation with specific municipalities.