IMPEL Next Generation Conference, 2018

On 26 September 2018, IMPEL presented the IMPEL Next Generation Conference on its ambitions, progress and way forward of its network. Set in the beautiful city of Zwolle, the conference offered a unique opportunity for environmental regulators and enforcers to learn and discuss challenges and experiences related to the practical implementation of EU environmental law.

Setting the Scene

Despite the improvements in implementing environmental policies and legislation in recent decades, the challenges that Europe faces today are considerable. To quote the European Environment Agency: ‘We have 35 years to ensure that we live on a sustainable planet by 2050. We need our actions and investments to be even more ambitious and more coherent.’ IMPEL set out its ambitions to contribute in IMPEL’s Position Paper: ‘Next Generation IMPEL’. Key areas are identifying, developing and sharing good practices in environmental compliance assurance, and strengthening the cooperation and coordination of actors in the compliance assurance chain.

“Through the Environmental Compliance Assurance initiative and its Action Plan, IMPEL received a new and great opportunity to play an ever-increasing role at the European level. Firstly, by extending the successful IMPEL Review Initiative (IRI) to cover more topics, more actors in the implementation chain, and more countries. Secondly, the Commission thinks that IMPEL is strong enough to extend the scope of the successful joint Enforcement Action project, by reaching out to new areas beyond trans-frontier shipments of waste. Finally, IMPEL is best placed to further develop training and capacity building. Our common wish is to achieve synergies in improving environmental implementation and compliance assurance. 2019 will be the year to see what synergies have been achieved and what synergies could be developed. Let us join forces and work towards this new level of partnership in the interest of better environmental implementation.” (Hans Lopatta, Policy Officer Legal Issues, European Commission, Directorate General for Environment – Compliance & Better Regulation)

State of the Environment in Europe and the Connection with Enforcement and Compliance

Innovation and Capacity Building

The IMPEL network has access to world-leading expertise and a deep reservoir of experience in ensuring good implementation in general and in tackling environmental crime. Today’s environmental problems require new tools and innovative thinking in addition to the more ‘traditional’ tools and approaches. Developing, promoting, sharing and applying new technologies and approaches are therefore essential. Just as important is building capacity among environmental practitioners. That’s why it’s IMPEL’s ambition to develop a knowledge and information centre to facilitate the collection, access and maintenance of its tools, including the use of new techniques.

Innovation and next-generation compliance and enforcement

“Our aim at the Inspectorate is to be data driven. We have a long history of acting on reports, and acting on the experience of inspectors. But the next generation will witness the introduction of a lot more data. We need a lot of expertise to make the best use of it. My expertise is remote sensing, where we work with a platform, such as a satellite or drone, and a sensor, such as a photo or thermographic camera. The combination of satellites and drones can be very effective and efficient in the work of the Inspectorate.”
Joël Davidse, GIS and Remote Sensing Analyst, Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate, Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, the Netherlands

“We use technology, but we don’t use it lightly. We need a court order or a prosecutor's approval to find evidence. It is quite easy to track people when they use a smartphone. If we have permission, we can collect an incredible amount of information, and we can do a lot with it. But it is not only about technology, it is also about social innovation. There is a growing feeling that we need more multi-agency cooperation to really tackle environmental crime. If we are not in this together, from both criminal and administrative sides, we will never be as effective as we can be.”
Edwin Lakerveld, Director Intelligence and Investigation Agency on Environmental Crime, Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate, Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, the Netherlands

Building capacity among environmental practitioners

MPEL provides a range of opportunities to increase the skill-set and knowledge of staff. But as session chair Tony Liebregts put it in his introduction: “There is always room for improvement.” Both Lorenzo Bonardi, dirigente U.O. Sviluppo del Sistema Ambientale, and Rob Kramers, expert at InfoMil, stressed that there is a great need for specific training in the field. That is why IMPEL is putting together an inventory of professional skills-sets and training needs.

A lot of questions still need to be answered in order to establish this inventory and build a strategy around this topic. What is the exact need and what is the relation with the IMPEL Review Initiative, the IRI? Would we do it multi-country, individually, or use e-learning? What methods to apply? This is also the case for the establishment of a knowledge and innovation centre: What should it be doing? Who should it serve?

'IMPEL is putting together an inventory of professional skills-sets and training needs'

To answer these questions, a questionnaire will be launched next month, Bonardi explained. Findings and strategy will be presented in December 2018. But what could trainings potentially look like? To provide some inspiration, Viire Viss of EUROSAI WGEA was invited to speak. She showed the MOOC e-learning method EUROSAI developed together with the University of Tartu, Estonia. The advantages of this approach are legion, she said. “It is fully online. Access is open, so not only auditors but also students and other interested parties can use it. It is open content and free of charge.”

Finally, another way to share information, was presented by Kramers. He presented a new IMPEL online tool, which uses the Regulatory Cycle and references to factsheets, good practices and IMPEL reports.

Best Practices

To deal with the environmental challenges of today, it’s of the utmost importance to share and further evolve existing best practices. Whether it is to broaden the scope of the IMPEL Review Initiative (IRI) to include the development of intra-national peer reviews, or to use the EU-wide Enforcement Actions in other fields of work besides controlling trans-frontier shipments of waste.

Citizen Science

Citizen science encompasses the many ways that citizens are involved in science through specific programmes and the use of suitable instruments, such as applications. Environmental protection is an area of great interest because of the diffuse and continuous contribution that society can offer complementary to compliance-monitoring and enforcement carried out by environmental authorities.

Involving the public through citizen science

“Citizen science is quite a new subject for IMPEL,” said session chair Olivera Topalov when she opened the dedicated session on the subject. Luca Demicheli, from the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, gave a presentation about the link between citizen science and IMPEL. “Citizen science is about science, but it is not scientific,” said Demicheli. “It’s all about communicating. And it is ideal for environmental issues, because people are interested in them.” Demicheli then talked about two successful citizen science projects, beginning with the ‘I LIVE GREEN’ video competition organised by the European Environment Agency (EEA) where citizens send in their green life choices and actions. The second project he mentioned was the joint effort by the EEA and the European Network of the Heads of Environment Protection Agencies (EPAs), where citizens in 12 countries are given instruments to monitor air quality. “It’s the largest citizen science project on air quality to date, and likely to expand to other environmental topics.”

'It is ideal for environmental issues, because people are interested in them'

Next up was Florin Homorean, commissar at the National Environmental Guard (NEG) in Romania. Homorean explained how NEG is responsible for the inspection of 8,554 installations and 985 protected areas covering 47,780 km², about 20% of Romania. “We don’t have the capacity to be in the area daily,” Homorean said. Then he talked about INCOLAB, a new and innovative approach to ensure compliance. It’s a collaboration management approach of specific Natura 2000 sites in the Danube border area. INCOLAB comes with an app that allows citizens to report cases that might affect protected habitats or species. “After an incident is reported, an automatic note is sent to the custodian or NEG commissary,” explained Homorean. “The citizen gets a notification of the confirmation, the progress of the inspection, and how and when the issue is solved.” INCOLAB was recently launched, but according to Homorean has already proved its value for organising and conducting inspections.

Agriculture

Agriculture represents one of the major assets of Europe: it secures safe food, employment, welfare, and countryside management, among others. However, if not well managed, agricultural activities also create pressure on environment components like soil, air and water. Many approaches can be implemented to address agricultural environmental matters; from the promotion of sustainable farming, to the control of harmful elements connected to agriculture.

Nitrate-diffuse pollution and agriculture: experiences in IMPEL

“IMPEL developed numerous projects aimed at tackling nitrate pollution issues related to agriculture. The approach of the projects was often based on cooperation between farmers and Inspectorates and best practice sharing. I think the starting points of these projects may have been too complicated and we should look into something simpler. This year, I’ve tried to explore the use of videos to exchange experiences and practices. We have talked about this in the SWETE – the Safeguarding of Water throughout Europe – project and we consider the use of videos to be of great potential to one of IMPEL’s most important purposes: the exchange of experiences.” (Presentation by Anette Dodensig Pedersen, Environmental Protection Agency, Ministry of Environment and Food, Denmark)

Environmental compliance assurance

“We should prepare guidance documents on good practices in environmental compliance assurance in rural areas. There are serious concerns about diffuse water pollution, water abstraction and the conditions of habitat and species, as was highlighted by the Environmental Application Review. A combined approach to rules affecting rural areas is highly needed. We have too many rules in different legislations, and they are not always applied and inspected in the same manner. We need methodological guidance.” (Presentation by Paolo Giandon, Head of Soil Monitoring and Remediation Service of the Environmental Protection Agency of Veneto Region, Italy)

Closing Remarks

“The use of innovative tools and methodologies significantly increases and supports the prediction of potential infringements. I think we should focus on this one particular word: prediction. We are now carrying out inspections to check if everything is going well, but we should think about the question: What are we going to do in the future?" (Pieter-Jan van Zanten, Director of the Regional Environmental Protection Agency IJsselland, the Netherlands)

“We talked about enforcement actions, peer reviews, broadening our scope and a better cooperation within Europe. We talked about being more flexible, and our plans to train the experts, but also train the trainers. Innovations and new tools and methods were discussed too. Innovation simplifies our work and makes it more effective. Exchanging and sharing innovative methodologies and experiences is therefore essential. All in all, we have focused on some very important work for the future.” ( Chris Dijkens, Chair of IMPEL)