Photo: BMLFUW/UBA/Gröger
Austria and global environmental protection
Cross-border cooperation in the field of environmental protection is a matter of course for Austria. What is Austria's present position in environmental policy?
Austria has a national territory of 83,855 km², but due to its geographical location in the centre of Europe’s economic areas is particularly affected by the multiple environmental impacts. For example, the Alpine divide of the Alpine country Austria, a natural barrier, is particularly strongly exposed to the long-range air transports. This affects especially the vulnerable high-alpine regions.Modern environmental technologies are available in Austria. The country has sufficient scientific and technological knowledge to survey its environmental status quo. Comprehensive data collections, for example on the soil status, the forest status, air quality and many other fields of relevance to the environment, are surveyed, evaluated and are available as basic data. In this way changes in the environmental situation are traceable and verifiable.
Austria is a member of the European Union and part of the global United Nations family. This is of relevance also to the environmental situation. Climate change, air pollution, ozone depletion, environmental risks caused by chemicals, threat scenarios due to nuclear waste, loss of biological diversity - these are major global challenges for environmental protection.
In the face of negative impacts on health and the threat from the climate change, environmental awareness has massively increased over the past few years. To reach solutions to global problems environmental policy puts its hopes increasingly in global strategies. Examples include the Conferences of Stockholm (1972), Rio (1992) and Kyoto (1997) as well as the Sustainability Summit of Johannesburg (2002) or Buenos Aires (2004).
UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program, has considerably gained in importance.
Being a small country and due to its geographic position, Austria very early realised the necessity for trans-national cooperation in the field of environmental protection. Despite national efforts many environmental problems can be addressed only by means of joint measures taken on regional or global level.
Austria has always been a driving force and initiator of multiple activities concerning bilateral and international environment-related issues. Austria is thus also a contracting party to all essential international environmental agreements. The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, an important instrument to fight against climate change, is of particular significance in this context. To meet its climate protection targets Austria has developed a national climate strategy.
Important multilateral agreements
Two multilateral agreements that are of particular importance to Austria are the Alpine Convention for the Protection of Sensitive Alpine Areas and the Agreement on the Protection of the Danube, which aims at preserving the River Danube, one of Europe's most important life lines and water veins, from its spring to the Black Sea as an ecologically sound living environment for many generations.
Austria has longstanding experience in environmental protection and makes its experience available to others within the framework of bilateral relations: For instance, in projects carried out at the administrative level Austria passes its know-how about waste, waste-water and plant-related legislation on to the new Member States of the European Union.
By means of internationally recognised environmental technology also Austrian enterprises help improve the environmental situation in those countries. In the framework of its EZA "Entwicklungszusammenarbeit" (Development Cooperation) Austria makes environment projects one of its key activities as well.
25.08.2008, Lebensministerium Öffentlichkeitsarbeit