Evaluation for improved guidelines on inspection and enforcement for operators

2013 EEEN Forum

Bjorn Persson, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency

According to the Swedish Environmental Code, every operator of activities that have undesirable consequences for people’s health or impact the environment is responsible for monitoring these activities, and acting to prevent the occurrence of injuries, damage, or nuisance. Compliance by operators with self-monitoring rules has great strategic importance for the implementation of the Environmental Code.

This code establishes far-reaching requirements for operators engaged in such activities. Well-developed operator self-monitoring is considered an effective way of assuming this responsibility. The inspection and enforcement authorities are responsible for planning and implementing the inspection and enforcement necessary for ensuring that the aims of the Enviromnental Code are upheld.

Two evaluations have been performed in recent time studying this from different perspectives. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency plays a key role in inspection and enforcement guidance with respect to application of the Environmental Code. The overall goal is that the evaluations should contribute to the development of the agency’s guidance. The aim of the first evaluation was to study how the inspection and enforcement authorities perform inspection of the operators’ self-monitoring. The inspection and enforcement authorities being municipal authorities and county administrative boards. In the second evaluation operators were interviewed on their primary motivations for performing self-monitoring, whether they comply with these rules and whether inspection and enforcement of self-monitoring actually encourages self-monitoring by operators.
This contribution discusses the results of these evaluations.

Key words: self-monitoring, inspection, evaluation, operator.

 

 

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