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As part of the previous Work Programme, the EAP Task Force prepared a report on Trends in Environmental Expenditure and International Commitment for the Environment in EECCA. The report was submitted to and endorsed by Environment Ministers at the 5th “Environment for Europe” Conference in Kiev, Ukraine in May 2003. With the assistance of the OECD EAP Task Force Secretariat, most EECCA countries (except for Belarus and Tajikistan) have for the first time collected historical environmental expenditure data according to an internationally-recognised methodology and classification.
The report revealed that the aggregate absolute volume of environmentally-related expenditures in the EECCA countries (€ 5.7 billion per year) is about two thirds of that in the EU candidate countries (€ 9 billion) which have only 37% of the EECCA population. Many EECCA countries (in particular Moldova, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia and the Russian Federation) seem to devote a significant share of their income to environmentally-related expenditure (e.g. up to 2.4 % in Moldova). This is usually not much less than in the most advanced EU accession countries, and not different from the EU member states.
Thus, it seems that at least some EECCA countries are more committed to improving environmental and water supply quality than is commonly thought. This suggests that it is the low ability to pay due to low income, rather than the lack of willingness to pay, that is the main obstacle to higher levels of domestic environmentally-related expenditure in these countries. There is, however, a group of countries that have marginalised environment in their domestic spending priorities to levels well below 1% of GDP (e.g. Azerbaijan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan and Armenia).
It seems unlikely that the EECCA countries will be able to rehabilitate and maintain environmentally-related infrastructure, or to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, without increased levels of environmental assistance. In 2000, environmentally-related assistance makes up for 6% of total assistance flows to EECCA, an increase from 2.8% in 1996. These proportions are very small compared to many other regions - e.g. 21% in the EU accession countries and up to 15% on average of global assistance to all regions. This suggests that there may be a scope to further increase of environmental assistance, even within existing budgets. However, EECCA countries could facilitate the benefits of international partnerships and further attract international environmental assistance flows by assigning clear priorities to environment in foreign co-operation programmes. For example, Kazakhstan is the only EECCA country to have prioritised environment within the EU/TACIS programme.
In the period 1996-2001, the total bilateral environmental assistance to the EECCA countries amounted to €0.8 billion, compared with about €2.5 billion to the EU accession countries in the same period, where it was boosted in 2000 and 2001 with the EU pre-accession financial instruments to support investments. The European Commission and the USA were the major sources of environmentally-related assistance to EECCA in the period 1996-2001, each accounting for about 17.7% of total environmental commitments. These two countries were followed by Denmark and Germany. Russia and Ukraine were the largest recipients of environmentally-related assistance, together accounting for more than two thirds of total commitments.
Within its new 2004-2006 Work Programme, the EAP Task Force envisages to update the Trends report and cover a longer data series that is 1996-2004. This work will aim to include analysis on all 12 EECCA countries.
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