The “Environmental Fiscal Reform” UNDP-GEF Project has organized a training workshop related to the economic tools of the environmental policies

The "Environmental Fiscal Reform" UNDP-GEF Project has organized during July 2-3, 2015, a training workshop on "Context of environmental policy economic tools". The workshop was launched by the Project Manager, Mihai Roşcovan, who made a general presentation of the reform principles, objectives and directions.

Mihai Roşcovan mentioned that to implement successfully the environmental fiscal reform, it is necessary to create a dialogue platform with all stakeholders, to ensure a better understanding of the problems related to the environment. Moreover, the enforcement of the environmental policy economic tools is closely correlated with the decision-making processes from a number of sectors, mentioned Mr. Roşcovan.

The workshop participants representing the central and local administration, the development partners and civil society got familiarized with the context of the economic tools used in the environmental policies in our country and in the EU member states.

The agenda of the event covered a number of sessions:

Revenues derived from environmental taxes. The participants were presented different revenue alternatives for the recycling schemes and environmental funds. As they redistribute the public finance revenues, it was recommended to take into consideration certain guiding principles to ensure efficiency and efficacy in this respect.

Share of environmental taxes in relation to the national public finances. This session has analyzed the evolution of the environmental taxes share in the public finance of the EU member states. And the best cases of involving the governments in extending the importance of environmental taxes were suggested as models worth to be followed by the Republic of Moldova as well.

A central topic referred to the Use of economic tools for fulfilling the commitments from the international environmental tools. The discussions referred to the possibility to use the fiscal tools to ensure and secure the observance of the international environmental commitments. In this respect, there was invoked the example of EU member states, which also participate in implementing different multilateral environmental agreements.

The session on "Environmental global governance and the local authorities' role in the national environmental policy", underlined the idea that all the environmental problems originate from the environmental problems at the local level. The workshop participants got acquainted with the good practices of local public administration within EU in relation to formulation of environmental policies, which deal directly with the environment. 

They also discussed about the environmental policy and economic tools at the regional level, with a presentation of the key tools of the economic/fiscal policy used to achieve the objectives of the environmental policies. In this respect, there were outlined the specific cases when these tools may be applied at the regional level in the Republic of Moldova.

The workshop ended with a training session on modalities to access and use ecological funds, tackling issues related to the opportunities and challenges of the local public authorities when benefiting from ecological funds. 

The training workshop was facilitated by Marian Mraz (Slovakia), international consultant, contracted within the UNDP-GEF Project "Strengthening capacities to undertake Environmental Fiscal Reform to meet national and global environmental priorities".