DECENTRALISED SUCCESS
Industrialists want to ensure that the money they spend for pollution abatement is used judiciously. Colombia, environmental agencies had legal authority to fine polluting industries. However, enforcement procedures were cumbersome and susceptible to legal delay. According to Greening industry: new roles for communities, markets and governments, a World Bank report, the new pollution charge system jettisons criminal sanctions: plants are free to pollute, but have to pay high charges for it. The programme began by charging us $28 per tonne for biological oxygen demand (bod), as well as us $12 per tonne for total suspended solids (tds). And it proved successful, bod discharges into the river Rio Negro fell by 52 per cent in the first six months under the plan, and tds fell by 16 per cent.
Colombia's environment ministry focused initially on technical issues, abatement costs and set charges that would reduce pollution. However, later they found that political issues eclipsed technical ones. Polluters themselves defined a central concern. Once they paid, who would get the money? The regional agencies laid claim to some of the funds, because they wanted financial insulation from the political funding cycle. The industrialists accepted that idea but refused remitting the balance amount to the national treasury. They viewed the charges as a financial sacrifice they would bear only if the revenues were used to fund local investments in cleaner manufacturing and wastewater treatment. Finally, representatives from the environment ministry, regional agencies, industrialists, and community organisations hammered out a mutually agreeable solution. The new charge programme would support "regional decontamination funds' used for local environmental projects, after some portion was diverted to fund agency budgets. The ministry team accepted the package and entrusted a bank to collect the charges (for a percentage fee), administer the funds to get maximum interest, and disburse them to approved projects.
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