Green Phone 2022 Semi-annual Work Report

Dear readers,

after six months of hard work on the complaints you sent to us through the Green Phone service, we hereby present you the Semi-Annual Work Report. To remind you, Green Phone is a free tool that provides citizens with information and advice and helps solving environmental problems in their local areas (Find out more: http://sunce-st.org/zeleni-telefon/).

The Semi-Annual report shows a total of 157 of your calls, of which 116 cases were resolved. Also, in addition to new cases, in 2022 we continued to resolve those from previous years for which administrative procedures and disputes are still ongoing.

Waste category

The largest number of complaints pertained, traditionally, to the waste category (45 complaints). However, unlike previous years, when waste issues were convincingly in the lead, in the first half of 2022, almost the same number of complaints were received on issues of illegal construction (43 complaints). It is important to note that most reports of illegal construction refer to maritime domain. It’s already common that, with the arrival of spring begins the preparation of the beaches and the coast for the summer, but very often done illegally and uncontrolled. We wrote about one such example in the article Suhi Potok – landscaping or legalization of illegal coastal land extension? and in the spring of 2022 we started an online campaign Stop beach filling on our social networks.

The impact of coastal extension and beach replenishment on seabed communities

Considering the frequent citizens complaints about beach filling and coastal reclamation, within SEAS project, an expert review on The impact of coastal extension and beach replenishment on seabed communities was prepared by Dr. sc. Silvije Kipson. Review is available on our website in Croatian: Analysis of the impact of beach filling. For the same purpose, the article How did beach filling become the messenger of summer? was published.

In addition to responding to citizens’ complaints, work on the Green Phone includes continuous education of citizens on how they can actively participate in environmental protection. Thus, in the article Why are natural beaches so important?, we wrote down all the steps that every citizen can take to achieve greater protection of the natural values of the sea and coast. Also, through the SEAS project, we made a comparative analysis of the spatial planning systems in Croatia and Norway and concluded that Croatians still do not consume sufficiently their right to give opinions and suggestions in the early stages of spatial planning. Simple steps for public participation are summarized in the infographic, in Croatian.

Sunce’s Green Phone will continue its work in the months to come, and our readers will be informed about the 2022 Work Report at the beginning of next year.

If you want to report an environmental problem, you can, in addition to calling the already known number 072/123-456, contact the lawyers of Sunce, Ivana Krstulović, Andrea Tvrdić and Hajdi Biuk, directly via e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected].

Best regards,

Sunce’s legal team

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