Approval and Implementation of International Conventions on Environmental Protection and Nature Conservation in Hungary [antikvár]

FO RE WORD For the past decades, parallel with economic development taking place in numerous countries of the world, utilisation of natural resources and loads on the environment resulting from the economic activities as well as the damage to its quality and the risk of global environmental changes have increased extremely. At the same time, with the development of environment monitoring systems and research methods a more comprehensive picture could be förmed on the state of the Earth's environment, its processes and various environmental impacts of humán activities. Just recently three scientists - Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland - were awarded with the Nobel Prize for discovering and proving that certain substances (the CFCs) produced for a long time and deemed to be non-hazardous were depleting the stratospheric ozone layer, which is essential in the evolution and maintaining of life on Earth. Much time was alsó needed to understand the various effects causing atmospheric acidification, increase of the atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gases, loss of biodiversity, gradual increase of pollutants in environment and other processes adversely affecting the state of environment. After recognising the harmful environmental impacts, their triggering causes and relationships, especially in the case of transboundary, large scale or global processes it became clear that co-ordinated international actions to mitigate these harmful impacts and to prevent further ones were necessary and could take place only on the basis of negotiations and agreements among the concerned countries. That objective is served by the international conventions of environment protection and nature conservation. The new Hungárián act on environmental protection (Tv-LIII, 1995) gives particular attention to participation in international co-operation (§. 1 /2e) and to carrying out tasks resulting from international commitments (§.3/3, §.11/1). According to the Act: "The government shall ensure the effectiveness of both the civil rights and the agreements and treaties concluded with other countries or international organisations in the field of environmental protection" (§.37/2) and " The Government's environmental protection tasks include especially: (a) fulfilling the environmental protection obligations and ensuring the enforcement of rights derived from international treaties" (§.41/5). A similarly important task is to provide adequate information on environmental protection knowledge, relationships, environmental impacts and obligations (§.12). By taking the above points into consideration, in this booklet we publish the basic information on all those international conventions in the implementation of which Hungary has direct interest and significant tasks. In addition, somé planned international legal instruments whose elaboration is now in progress will alsó be briefly mentioned. It was our intention with this compilation to give a comprehensive picture of these conventions with particular emphasis on the national tasks and their implementation. Preparing for the Hungárián edition. instead of providing a detailed description of the relevant conventions, we strived to emphasise their essential objectives, features and provisions to give a background for better understanding of the national commitments and the status of their fulfillment. We were of the view that awareness of these international conventions was important for many people in Hungary working in the field of environmental