Uncertainty over the future eligibility of agro-environmental projects to claim some of the €171 million awarded annually to Poland under the European Union's SAPARD scheme has environmental non-governmental organizations (NGO) and agro-environmentalists worried that they won't be able to find the money to complete their projects.
The SAPARD, or the special accession program for agriculture and rural development, scheme was launched on July 2, but the Agricultural Ministry decided in late June to exclude agro-environmental projects from the funding since it wasn't able to prepare them in time, according to Anna Liro, the head of the rural development and agro-environmental division at the Agriculture Ministry.
"We realized we wouldn't have time to put the program into action before 2004 anyway and that it would be better to focus on the other aspects of SAPARD," Liro said. "The agro-environmental programs are difficult, and we would prefer to wait to claim the money entitled to us for these projects once we join the EU."
But excluding agro-environmental projects from SAPARD cash bodes ill for those who have already raised money to start them up.
"Scrapping agro-environmental schemes from the SAPARD program has disillusioned us very much," said Małgorzata Znaniecka, the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) director of the Batalionowa Łąka project, a scheme being developed to protect the natural grass wetlands within the Biebrzański National Park in northeast Poland. The project is currently being funded by the WWF and EkoFundusz. "These programs are a chance for the effective protection of valuable half-natural and inherent ecosystems formed through traditional farming," she said. "We had hoped that the initiation of agro-environmental programs would secure the financial backing of projects that are currently being financed by EkoFundusz and WWF. As a result, we now have to count on financial backing from sources other than the EU."
The Agriculture Ministry's Liro said that agro-environmental programs are still at top of the ministry's agenda, and, for instance, work preparing pilot schemes for grass wetlands protection are still underway.
"It's not even that there has been a delay since we don't think we would have made it by (the) 2004 (deadline) to activate these projects," Liro said. "And by waiting for (EU) accession, we can pump even greater funds into these projects."
Agro-environmental project workers at government-sponsored institutions agreed that their work had not been affected as a result of the decision to exclude their projects from SAPARD funding.
"All the time the team in charge of agro-environmental projects at the ministry is still preparing them," said Wiesław Dźbek, a director at the Institute of Land Reclamation and Grassland Farming. "From what I understand there was a plan to use SAPARD for our projects, and now our work is aimed at programs available upon EU entry. But the work itself has not changed."
But the final decision to scrap agro-environmental projects from the SAPARD entitlement ultimately rests with the European Commission, the EU's executive branch.
"There are no firm decisions yet, and the EC is in the middle of discussing the proposals the Polish side put forward, among which is the suspension of the agro-environmental section of the SAPARD program," said Jean-Marc Thrarieux, the head of the agriculture and regional development section of the EC's Polish delegation. "The outcome would be either to accept them or propose further dialogue on the situation."
