| A Call to Central
and Eastern European Cities |
Sustainable development on Earth requires sustainable communities
that live in harmony with their natural environment and use their resources
in a sustainable way. Many local communities in Central and Eastern Europe
are aware of their responsibility towards the environment and realize the
necessity of Local Agenda 21.
Sustainability is a state that can be achieved as a result of sustained
efforts for environmental improvement and a continuous creative process
of searching for new solutions. Experience shows that the framework and
approach of eco-management and audit schemes (EMAS) already applied by
a growing number of industrial organizations and local communities is a
useful and effective tool for this pursuit. EMAS helps:
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promote continuous improvements in environmental performance by establishing
environmental policies, programs, and management systems,
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perform systematic, objective, and periodic evaluation of these systems,
and
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provide relevant information about these activities to the public.
The communities of the undersigned cities, like some other Central and
Eastern European communities, are committed to make continuous efforts
for sustainable development and environmental improvement. Together with
the undersigned non-governmental organizations, we want to improve the
effectiveness of these efforts by making it more systematic, controlled
and more transparent to the public by introducing Eco-Management and Audit
Scheme to deal with key environmental issues. We are dedicated to:
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identifying key objectives based on a comprehensive analysis of environmental
issues, and environmental impact of different activities,
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setting our objectives and develop environmental action programmes based
on this review,
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developing a comprehensive environmental management system including
organizational structures, responsibilities, procedures, processes, tools
and mechanisms for implementing the programmes,
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making a regular formal evaluation of implementation as well as operation
of the management system, and
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informing the public about the whole process and its results.
Our approach is voluntary. We are legally not obliged to introduce this
strict formal approach and there is no institutional framework for verifying
voluntary environmental audits of local communities, but we think that
with this systematic method we can better serve sustainable development.
We also believe that our experience will demonstrate the usefulness and
applicability of the method in the transition countries and spur other
communities to follow our example.
We, the undersigned cities and non-governmental organizations, call
upon Central and Eastern European cities to intensify their efforts for
Local Agenda 21 by applying Eco-Management and Audit Scheme in their community,
cooperate for the improvement of the methods and tools to make the scheme
more effective and create an institutional framework that will spur other
communities to follow our example.
June 20, 1998
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