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POLAND’S environment minister last week rejected Czechoslovakia’s offer
of compensation for polluting the River Oder with heavy fuel oil four years
ago. The country demanded ‘realistic damages’ for the oil spill, not merely
a gesture, said Bronislaw Kaminski. ‘We are calling for an international
commission on the pollution of the Oder, with the participation of the Baltic
countries and the EEC,’ he said.

Pollution caused by neighbouring countries is now a fact of life in
central Europe, and one which Poland is no longer prepared to keep quiet
about, said Kaminski. There are a number of similar disputes for which ‘neighbourly
cooperation’ has proved ineffective. These include the discharge of carcinogens
from the lignite that fuels the Stoneva power plant in Czechoslovakia, and
emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide from East
Germany. ‘After unification Germany will be the biggest poisoner in Europe
. . . We have the right to expect help and cooperation from a united Germany,’
Kaminski said.

Without Western help, Poland will be unable to clean up its domestic
sources of pollution. But even with help it could take up to ten years to
reach ‘something approaching EEC standards’. Foreign help brings its own
problems. Western firms want to sell Poland state-of-the-art technology
to combat pollution, but even if the West provides equipment free, the country
cannot afford to maintain it.

Western researchers also want to make field tests of the polluted soil,
water and air. Yet, according to Eugenia Koblak-Kalinska from the environment
ministry, there is already a large backlog of measurements that go back
decades but have never been acted on. ‘We know what we have to do,’ she
explained. ‘What we need is simply the money and the adequate technology
with which to do it.’

But whether Poland can ever achieve the ultimate aim of coordinating
its industrial and environmental policies is doubtful. According to Stefan
Kozlowski, vice president of parliament’s Commission on Environmental Protection,
already two of the most potentially effective recent proposals – an ‘ecological
tax’ on fuel, and the establishment of a State Environmental Inspectorate
with powers of prosecution – have fallen by the wayside.