Publication details
Illegal waste transport and the Czech Republic: An environmental sociological perspective
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| Year of publication | 2007 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | Starting in late 2005, Czech authorities discovered substantial amounts of municipal waste being illegally transported from Germany to the Czech Republic. The dumping of more than 30,000 tons of German waste in so-called “black dumps” throughout the Bohemian countryside raised important social, economic and political questions about how to mitigate the negative health and environmental impacts and prevent future occurrences. Evidence suggests that the forces of the black market not only overwhelmed state authorities, but existing waste shipment rules were easily subverted and proposed policy reforms may make the problem of waste import worse. This paper seeks to facilitate the understanding of this problem and the search for solutions by putting it in sociological perspective. The research question is, how do waste management policies at the national and international levels contribute to both causing and resolving the problem? This paper first describes the history of the illegal waste transport and disposal and analyzes relevant existing and proposed waste management policies in the Czech Republic, Germany, and the European Union. Then it applies the environmental sociological Treadmill of Production (ToP) theory to explain why current policies may help cause the problem, how proposed policies may aggravate it, and what kinds of institutional changes may bring remedies. The ToP theory hypothesizes that environmental degradation is caused by powerful political-economic forces, and that the protection of environmental quality can be achieved only through structural reform. The dilemma of illegal waste shipment highlights the difficult role of the government in balancing protection of environmental quality and human health with the promotion of commerce and economic growth – a role that environmental sociologists call the “environmental state.” Interviews and documentary analysis provide data to describe the situation and test ToP theory. The paper concludes that ToP theory is useful to analyze the illegal waste issue, but must be refined to better apply to the Czech case. |