BOTTLENECKS & SUGGESTIONS REGARDING  ENVIRONMENT & WATER MANAGEMENT

Mrs Serap KULELI
Deputy General Director for the Protection of Environment

Current Thinking about Environmental & Water Policies in Turkey

Water has an economic value. Therefore, the principle called "User and Polluter Pay" has become a valid rule. A reasonable price application for water supplying services unavoidably invites the economical use of water. Particularly in developing countries, the price of water is highly subsidized and water is accepted like a free merchandise. In order to provide a rational use for water, such mentality must be avoided at once and a reasonable pricing policy must be developed and applied. Indeed, the experiences gained in the past has pointed out that increasing water prices forced the end users to decrease their non vital water demands and also forced them to invest on maintenance of their water systems and on their needs for more economical use of water.

The services must be provided to the people, to the end user by the local authorities through the relevant administrative bodies. The assessment scale of the services of application, operation and maintenance is the opinion of the local people. Training and capacity building must be among the most important activities of the local authorities in order to be able to provide more efficient and productive services for the benefit of the public.

In case of services which are directly served to the end users, the participation of the local people and realization of democratization and rationalization during application and operation phases must be realized at the level of the local administrations.

In the meantime the important roles of the private sector and NGO’s within the service sector of the public must not be neglected. The aim of the local authorities must be to provide a self financing system for the services realized at the local and regional levels. Finance of the services must be supported through real sources and the tariffs must be determined and ranked well enough to support the services.

The main principle of the policy concerning environment has been identified as "management of natural resources enabling continuous economic development through protection of human health and natural balance; and living a natural physical and social environment to the future generations which they deserve". Within this frame, the basis, to take environment fully into account in all economic policies has been adopted.

The "User and Polluter Pay" principle had been stated in the legislation concerning environment as a policy. The aim of environmental legislation is not only to prevent and eliminate environmental pollution, but also to allow the management of natural and historical resources in a way to utilize and preserve them.

Practical Environmental Policies & Problems Related to Water Management

"Environmental Law" was passed in 1983 so as to take into account environmental considerations in economic development, and established the "Polluter Pays" principle.

However, one can see a considerable degradation of the water quality. There is a risk that this degradation might be detrimental to the objectives of the implemented hydraulic works. Due to the heavy pollution, some water intakes for domestic water supply might have to be deserted. In some places, when they have to irrigate, farmers complain about pollution.

Such a situation may be explained by the fact that it is difficult to raise funds for environmental projects. In that respect some regulatory and institutional arrangement might create conditions for a more favorable context.

Those are some examples of the wide variety of significant environmental problems, due to a rapid growth and structural changes in the Turkish national economy, coupled with fast urbanization are generating, which are now receiving huge attention from the government and the public. The most important aspect of Turkey’s structural characteristics is the transition into a modern structure from its traditional structure. It is obvious that the environment is also affected in such a structure transformation process.

In brief, approaches regarding environmental policies through planned period may be summarized chronologically as follows: Initially the principle was "exploitation of resources mostly for development" along with "elimination of existing pollution", after this "prior prevention of environmental pollution and damages" and lastly "leaving natural resources developed for future generations".

Within the frame of the 7th Five Year Plan which covers the year 1996 - 2000, it is aimed to reach the goals and principles of Agenda 21 and to obtain the necessary legal, institutional, administrative and financial arrangements that have been mentioned together with the necessary requirements.

To integrate technological, socioeconomic, environmental and human health considerations, a multisectorial approach to water resources management has been undertaken to the extent possible since mid-century. In recent decade considerations are focused on making it more active for the prevention, reduction and control of pollution, caused mainly by rapid socioeconomic development.

Concepts of interaction between environment and development carry a different and more important meaning for Turkey and other developing countries from that for developed countries. Incorporating ecological aspects into economic decisions will help leave a cleaner environment for the future generations. From the standpoint of implementation of sustainable development principles, it is very important that industrial sector takes during the development period all necessary measures and act in accordance with the environmental conditions with respect to current laws and regulations. In this regard, a study that will ensure a congruity between economic sectors and the environment has been initiated in order to eliminate the bottlenecks encountered in the prevention of environmental contamination from the industries of high pollution potentials. Voluntary agreements were signed for the sugar, automotive, cement, ferment, leather and tanning and pulp and paper industries.

The National Environmental Action Plan

The Government of Turkey places environmental policies among its top priorities and has undertaken a number of legal, institutional, and physical measures aimed at protecting and improving the country’s environmental quality. Such efforts, however, are rather independently undertaken fragmented initiatives instead of specially identified steps of a coherent strategy. In view of this, the preparation of an "Environmental Strategy and Action Plan" is prepared by the State Planning Organization and the Ministry of Environment in Turkey through financial support of the World Bank in order to assist the Goverment in establishing a hierarchy of its sectoral, regional, and thematic environmental priorities, and in planning and implementing the requisite preventive and remedial actions in an integrated and systematic fashion.

The task covered the entire ecosystem of Turkey with a view to establish a linkage between the Country’s development objectives and economic targets (privatization, tourism promotion, price liberalization) and the resulting environmental implications. The plan;

Serve as a basis for the development and implementation of the Goverment’s environmental strategy and the inter-sectoral co-ordination between various agencies involved with the environment;

Assist the Government in establishing a hierarchy of environmental priorities, resource allocation and investment decisions, an aplication of effective environmental policies;

Provide the necessary inputs for the Development Plans as well as for the formulation, composition, and design of an environmental investment program for Turkey, for consideration by international agencies.

The taskforce looked at the conservation of natural resources (i.e.land, water and sea) and wildlife, industrial and municipal pollution control and waste management, tourism / urban development patterns and their spatial dimentions (i.e. coastal vs. inland concentration and potential) and the preservation of historical and cultural heritage. The development of the action plan would take into account the Government’s planning and investment targets, the World Bank’s environmental assistance strategy for Turkey, and the priorities identified under the Mediterranean Technical Assistance Program and the Black Sea Environment Program.

Trough a participatory approach for developing the NEAP, contributions from working groups comprising of Goverment agencies, institutions, universities, private sector, municipalities and NGO’s were provided. A synthesis report will be produced by mid of 1998.

Drinking Water Supply & Sewerage Services Problems -

Experiences in Infrastructure Services Management

As stated before, the rapid social change in Turkey, above all in developing cities, in parallel with industrialization and population growth, creates numerous environmental problems. Of these problems: supply of drinking water, sewerage services and infrastructure works are the most important ones. Because most of the problems of the cities are focused on the illegal settlement areas. The percentage of the people which are living in the cities was 64.6 % in 1997 and this percentage is going to be 70.6 % in the year 2000. Besides another point observed along with the population growth of the cities is the concentration on certain cities. At present the 46.7 % of the people living in cities are settled in provinces with populations more than one million and in metropolitan areas.

As the natural result of such developments, although there is a remarkable increase in the investments for drinking water supply and sewerage services, there are still shortages of these activities. Especially, for the metropolitan cities because of the over population, the foreseen goals have never been achieved until now. The projects prepared to meet these overflowing demands are being designed unavoidably to provide technologies with higher financial costs and are also being planned to serve more municipalities than before and these projects always require extension of the present facilities.

In Turkey, the infrastructure services are realized through the leadership of the state. However in course of time, local sources must be developed by municipalities in order to finance investments for restorations and constructions of additional establishments.

We are in the need to tackle several important priorities in the water supply and sanitation sector, including pricing issues, environmental concerns, the need to depoliticize decision-making, develop financial mechanisms and institutional arrangements to provide service to medium and small municipalities and rural areas, mobilize private capital and know-how, and promote beneficiary participation reforms in the legal and institutional framework governing utilities to facilitate the involvement of private operators. We are trying a new approach under the Antalya Water Supply Project. A company established under the Commercial Code is responsible for managing the water supply and sanitation services, and a private agent will operate the systems under lease and management arrangements. If successful, we expect to draw on this model in designing future investments in the sector.

Nevertheless, the concept of participatory and decentralized management involving the water users’ representatives in the decision-making processing, gathers momentum. In some areas, within the past years, the management of the secondary network for irrigation has been entrusted to the farmers themselves. The experiences gained from such a measure is often very positive.

The incomes, collected by the municipalities through the applications of appropriate pricing policies, must be saved particularly for the maintenance, renewal and extension expenses of the water and sewerage networks. Following the establishment of these fundamental principles, under the light of the planning, orientation, support and inspection of the state, autonomous management such as water management administrations or municipality unions which will be able to realize the relevant investments, can be founded.

The development activities of the water sources must be considered in a wide analytical frame with taking care of the relations and affections between the ecosystem and the socioeconomic activities, and finally, the development possibilities of the performance of the sector and strengthening the productivity of the services must always be kept in mind.