The Councillor as Guardian of the Environment


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<The Councillor as Guardian of the Environment>

An Essay and Workshop for Local Elected Leaders on Environmental Governance
with Emphasis on Adopting Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs)
- Training for Elected Leadership -

Part II - Workshop on the Councillor as Guardian of the Environment
- WORKSHOP -

WORKSHOP COMPONENTS

13.9 Case Study: REVIVAL OF HOPE FOR KRAKOW

Time Required: 60 minutes

Objective:

The case study is to help participants appreciate the importance of making decisions about investments in programmes to improve the environment based on data-based assessments of environmental risk.

Process:

Provide each participants with a copy of a case called The Revival of Hope for Krakow. Ask participants to read the case. When participants have read the case, divide them into small groups. Ask each group to discuss and answer the question that follows the case and report back in about 20 minutes .

When small groups have reported back, ask each group how it answered the question. Encourage a general discussion and comparison of points of view.

Trainers' note: The point of this case is for participants to begin recognizing the importance of making decisions based on a thorough, data-based environmental assessment and to avoid premature, off-the-wall decision making.

THE REVIVAL OF HOPE FOR KRAKOW

Note: The following situation is freely adapted from The Wealth of Communities, a collection of stories about communities that are meeting their own needs and at the same time protecting the environment for future generations.¹²

The situation

Nowa Huta, a 10,000 acre complex of coke ovens, blast furnaces and rolling mills is the workplace of some 25,000 people. It presents an awesome spectacle with its great plumes of glutinous, nicotine-colored smoke rising from a thick forest of chimneys. By the end of the 1980s, Nowa Huta was producing startling levels of pollutants: 170 tons of lead, seven tons of cadmium, 470 tons of zinc and 18 tons of iron a year. This falls as dust on and around Krakow together with other pollutants spewing out of 200,000 domestic chimneys and wafting down from the industrial region of Upper Silesia.

With steel production down, air pollution has declined as well. But it is still severe enough to inflict a sore throat on the visitor within a day or so after arriving. According to unofficial estimates, over half the food produced in the Krakow region is unfit for human consumption. Infant mortality is well above the Polish average and four times greater than in Sweden, while life expectancy is about eight years less than in Western Europe. Krakow and upper Silesia also suffer high incidence of cancer, and most observers conclude this is attributable to the high levels of pollutants.

The air pollution is so severe that many of Krakow's buildings are rotting away. The statues of the 12 apostles which stood unblemished outside St. Peter and Paul's Church have been reduced to featureless lumps of stone in recent memory. Newly painted buildings are transformed, in a matter of a couple of years, from bright strawberry and yellow to dirty shades of gray.

Since 1989, the city government's Municipal Services Department has given considerable thought to such issues as waste management and pollution abatement. "We have more power now," says Janusz Kala, deputy-director of the department, "but less money than before [the change of government], and everyone agrees that the costs to improve the environmental situation are colossal." At the present time, initiatives taken by city government and others are barely scratching the surface in meeting Krakow's immense environmental problems. However, these initiatives have brought people together who previously had been strangers to one another. Government initiatives have encouraged people to cooperate. The idea that individuals are responsible for their own actions, and that everyone can take positive steps to help improve the environment, is at last beginning to take hold in Krakow.

Questions

Assume you are a member of the Krakow City Council and that you have just been elected on a platform that has promised strong governmental action to cleanup Krakow's polluted environment. What is the first action you would propose to determine the extent of the problem facing the council?

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