The revolutions that swept through Central and Eastern Europe2 in 1989 and 1990 opened the Iron Curtain only to reveal a devastating environmental legacy — a legacy left from forty years of an authoritarian, centrally planned political and economic system. By now, the details of the environmental situation in Central and Eastern Europe have been widely reported. In fact, we have become relatively numb to some fairly startling statistics. For example, sixty-five percent of Poland’s rivers are unfit even for industrial use; eighty percent of Prague’s annual output of 40,000 tons of hazardous waste cannot be traced; forty percent of Bulgaria’s birds are endangered; and seventy-three percent of the forests in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) are severely damaged from acid rain.
To environmentalists in the East, the opening of the Curtainand the environmental concern that sparked the revolutions spawned new hope that Central Europe could finally address its tragic environmental conditions. It was a chance to restructure their society and economy in a way that will protect individual rights, including the right to a clean and healthy environment. It was a chance to use the experience from Western democracies as well as from the former Soviet bloc to develop a new social and political system: a “third way,” perhaps greener than communism or capitalism, that incorporates environmental protection as a foundation for economic development.
This article surveys the environmental law reforms taking place throughout the region and some of the important issues surrounding these reforms. Two caveats to this approach should be highlighted at the outset. First, information from the region is still somewhat incom-plete. Precise translations of laws, in particular, are not always available. This article can provide only a general guide to legislative and regulatory trends in the region and should not form the basis for specific action or decisions. Second, every country in the region is different, with its own complexities. Despite our failure to resist the temptation to generalize about the region, 6 we urge others to take the time to learn the differences between the countries, their cultures, and their paths to environmental reform.