How exactly are environmental policies implemented? Are decisions made in a transparent way? Does the public have access to environmental information? Are we participating equally in decision making? Are those who are inducing environmental damage being punished?

Civil society organizations engaged through the Green Power Up support program have been analyzing      how public policies in the area of environmental protection are implemented in the local self-government units from which they come. The research was conducted according to a unique methodology for monitoring of the public policies implementation, and the data was processed and presented in the form of Green Cards and interactive map on the website of Coalition 27.

The survey results show a relatively high level of harmonization of local environmental policies with the EU's legal values. There are indicative results of the city of Belgrade and the city of Bor, where the state of the environment is at a worrying level while the assessment in the survey is quite high. This points to several conclusions:

• Vertical coordination and cooperation between local, regional and central authorities and the effects of this cooperation must be considered. It is obvious that the accumulated problems cannot be solved by intervening in local;

• It is also necessary to monitor the effects of environmental policy implementation locally and whether the Ministry of Environmental Protection is monitoring the results of these policies at the local level, especially in municipalities, which have serious environmental problems;

• Administrative intervention (making plans and reports) is not enough to achieve a satisfactory level of environmental protection and preservation.

• There is an obvious gap between the implementation of administrative requirements and the real effects of measures and activities implemented by municipalities in the area of environmental protection

• It leaves out measuring the effects of implementing plans, measures and activities envisioned in planning and strategic documents. It is obvious that municipalities do not monitor the implementation of planning and strategic documents and the achievement of set goals. In cases where achieving goals is absent, there is no revision of the plans and adjustments of measures and activities to the targets.The results shown on the Green Cards indicate that long-term monitoring needs to be established on a larger sample. After one or two years, it is not possible to make more concrete conclusions, only trends have been observed that should be further examined.

The general conclusion is that through the examination of the association, as well as municipalities, they had the opportunity to learn, taking into account that many legal obligations were not known, until they joined this research. 

Some associations and informal groups have been interested in getting involved, or to continue conducting monitoring, regardless of whether they are formally supported through the Green Incubator project. The joint conclusion of the associations that conducted the research at least twice is that their second cycle was much easier and they gained a lot of knowledge and skills during the research.

Green Talks  was held in the presence of more than 80 representatives of local associations engaged through Green Power Up support program and Green Incubator project. Besides this topic, the event also discussed energy transition, climate change, local activism, the circular economy and the role and state of civil society in Serbia.

 The Green Incubator project is being implemented by Belgrade Open School in partnership with Young Researchers of Serbia and Environmental Engineers Group with Europe Union support.

Author of the photo: Belgrade Open School