It is my great pleasure to present the work of the Council for Environmental Protection of the Republic of Slovenia. Allow me before or parallel of this to show you some characteristics of our country.

Slovenia with a little more than 20 thousand square kilometres of surface and with 2 million of inhabitants is one of the smaller countries of Europe, nevertheless, it has many interesting and notable characteristics. First, Slovenia is situated in a very significant geographic, internationally absorbing and living space at a junction of four national groups - Romanic, Germanic, (Ugro)Hungarian and Slavonic, to which the Slovenian nation belongs.

Slovenia is the Central European and Mediterranean country between the Adriatic and the Pannonian basin. It is lying on the southern side of Alps and having the easiest transition from the Sea to the Central Europe is open also to west, east and southeast of Europe. Transitive motorways bring environmental problems. Construction new motorways demand a lot of investment causing therefore the shortage for environmental projects. About 35 million cross-border entries of vehicles yearly enlarge traffic strain and air pollution is still an open environmental problem. At least one million of foreign tourists and more come to Slovenia, this enlarge the supply from 2 to 3 million of people in summer time, and in tourist resorts the traffic problems and burdens on the environment are raised for several times.

More advantageous is to show Slovenia as an ecological park of Europe. The countryside is composed of various floristic, faunistic and climatic regions and also of different provinces - mountainous, forested, wine and fruit growing regions, cattle breeding and tourist hills. Only one fifth of the territory consists of valleys and depressions with the majority of towns, arable land, communications and factories.

About 56 % of surface is overgrown by forests which are together with water ecosystems the greatest reserve of natural resources and values. The woods are composed of some 400 vegetative communities from 23 classes enlisted. On less than a hundredth of percent of the Earth surface there are more than one percent of natural species of the Earth living in Slovenia, and among them are 3,5 percent endemic.

Because of prevalent limestone strata about 44 % of surface of this country has karstic phenomena: the waters are trickling and penetrate into depth and even rivers disappear underground. Those rivers and currents created more than 6 thousand caves; some of them are world wide known and have special ecosystems. The participants of tomorrow excursion will visit some of those beauties.

Slovenia is a hilly and mountainous country. We are now in a depression which divide two parts of the Eastern Alps, the Lake Bled is the relict from glacial age which ended only 10 thousand years ago. It is really the fortune to have so many forests because of surface protection and to retain the waters. In spite of that about 40 % of surface are endangered by erosion. On the very variegated relief and geologic substratum and several hundreds of soil types the agricultural production is technically of great pretension. Besides, the production which ensures up to 85 % of needed food, is aggravated by prevalence of small farms. Some big pig farms produce special ecological problem with liquid manure. Another problem occurs by dryness in the eastern agricultural regions and floods in mountainous regions. Slovenia is rich with rivers but in mountainous part most of them are torrents and erosion and floods are as harmful as 29 % of still too much polluted rivers.

Variegated environmental problems are always present in the nature of our country and the population with its needs and interference makes those problems more actual and critical. Therefore, our Council for Environmental Protection has pretty large scale of topics to research, discuss and comment.

The Environmental Council of the Republic of Slovenia is an independent consultative body with eleven members, elected in the Parliament, highly skilled in their professions of environmental orientation, proposed by universities, SASA and NGOs. The actual environmental themes are examined together with many other experts and the affected factors in order to get an objective interpretation. After that, our estimations and proposals, accepted during the sessions, usually with consensus, are submitted to the Parliament, the government or some ministries, other factors and public too.

Among numerous environmental themes in the past years the Council examined as preferential: the biotic diversity and preservation of nature, protection of waters and the proposal of water law, waste management, environmental research programme and 20 projects, developmental and structural changes in the country population, the environmental protection in the region of Istria and Karst, genetics in sense of environmental influence, physical planning and space regulations.

The Council started its work six years ago without having any programme of environmental development. During the time we discussed projects of motorways, also actual and prospective programme of environmental tasks was prepared. Later we had the opportunity to help designing the National Programme of Environmental Protection which was enacted by the Slovenian National Assembly in 1999. These years saw also the co-ordination of the Slovenian legislation with that of the European Union. Our legislation is completed; we are waiting only for the water protection law to be changed and the environmental laws to be implemented in all sectors. In order to solve the environmental problems it would be the best to support the enterprises to develop and establish new co-natural technologies on high level of international environmental standards, alongside to solve the problem of waste and to grow a set of water cleaning systems in next 10 to 15 years.

At present we are searching the agricultural pollution of environment. At its next session in November the Council will discuss the tourist relation to environment and the accordance of tourist and environmental ethics. The further programme will include the energetic, monitoring of environment, geographic informational system, karst problems, radioactive waste and still actual theme of sustainable development in comparison to a new economic strategy to be designed in some months.

Environmental policy has evolved from direct resistance towards harmful environmental phenomena to a complex policy, handling problems from ecological, naturalistic, ethic, health, legal, social and economical aspects. It is specially included in local, regional and global horizons, as an entirety and as a starting-point for equal or better future.

Let me to show you some data about the state of environment.

Like Europe Slovenia imports three quarters of energy, this is oil, gas, some coal of high quality and nuclear fuel. Production of uranium for nuclear plant is over and most of the coal mines too. Present renewed sources are hydraulic and those of biomass. Structure of final energy available is as follows: oil and gas 67 %, electric energy 20 %, coal, wood and district heating 13 %. We are waiting for solar and geothermal sources.

About 8 % of surface of Slovenia is environmentally protected, half of this is the Triglav National Park, but it is planned to enlarge the protected areas up to 30 % in a few years. Another serious problem, resulting from the past as the consequence of growing industry and the urbanization, is the loos of a major part or arable land. The transition of agricultural production in the time of admittance to the European Union after some years will be complicated.

Our environmental policy is obvious of sustainable development sense. The technologies of production and services should be improved. Only higher national product will enable to invest more. Therefore, we look forward to scientific and educational advancement. We suggested that it is still now urgent for the penetrating branches and regions to research all environmental conditions because of two effects. First, to protect our nature which is beside people's creativity our unique advantage in European community, and secondly, to help to select projects to be environmentally acceptable. This is always cheaper from the subsequent corrections of technologies. The inspections could have better basis for decisions too.

In the protection of natural and cultural heritage we need consensus about what to be totally protected, where to get and what kind of exceptional conditions for permanent living population and which ruins could be restored and which only well protected. For this consensus we have to have good co-operation with the government and parliament and with the experts base too. Environmental policy has to be in accordance with the economical policy in the sense to be realisable but not subordinate.

In the focus of these activities, informational and publicistic activities are of special meaning to bring evaluations, explanations and to expand knowledge. Perceiving phenomena and upon this to build environmental information science is the state system, which, partially, already shows us an image of conditions, although not completed. It is supplemented by research activities with numerous projects. Not only the Slovenian Council for Environmental Protection is presented with the printed works, but also the Council for the Study and Protection of Environment attached to SASA, faculties, institutes, expert associations, publishers and non-governmental environmental organisations. On this spot, allow me to mention only some extensive miscellanies from the past decade, where numerous experts have been involved: Environment in Slovenia 1994, Dictionary of Environment and Man 1995, Nature of Slovenia 1996, Chemization of Environment 1997, Slovene and some European reports of Environment Condition. Beside these many others deal with the theory and practice of environmental protection.

Professional and cultural level of Slovenian environmental policy and research activities allows the publishing of quality works and magazines. We can easily say that nowadays it is not difficult to look for grounding of experts and in the literature for explanation of phenomena or project scheduling. However, the essential things must be reached by improving administrative operations and developmental activities, which could help solving and cleaning the untidiness in our environment.

Environmental inquiries and endeavours cannot lean only on professional groups and conscientious individuals. We all live in the environment and in nature. But some are misled by hypothesis that we have an affluent nature, bearing existent burdening in digesting many rejected things. Another false thinking is that only environmental bodies and agencies are responsible for order and cleanness of the environment. But this is not the case. As a matter of fact, we are living on natural sources and some of them are already seriously endangered or even running dry. Different strikes of degraded nature are warning us on this problem, among them are the civilisation diseases. It is very important to recognise that only in healthy environment a social community can exist and evolve, where relationships among people and those of people towards nature are settled well.

Next to reports, with which the activity of the Slovenian Council for Environmental Protection is completely public, we have begun to publish popular, yet specially deliberated booklets in the collection 'Harmonised and co-natural'. Four of them have already been issued. With the first one the National Programme of Environmental Protection, our developmental direction, has been presented. We cannot build environment only by limiting the harmful influences on nature, but also by co-natural managing of the entire life and community development. Next to air, water is primary and permanent source of life. To this view we have dedicated our second booklet. The concern for water is of high priority from the view of programme too. The main process in nature and environment is urbanisation, therefore we have dedicated our third booklet to the city managing. All environmental activities are executed due to general and individual needs, respectively interests.

The fourth booklet brought new dimension of environmental complex. It is dealing with the quality of our lives and effects on it, which arise from the environment and our daily habits. This theme is presented by the title: 'Health and environment, the quality of environment and life at the end of the 20^th century". The main point of the booklet is the cognition that over two thirds of the quality of our lives are reflecting the effects of our environment treatment and general culture of residence, nutrition, work and other activities. At this point, a question arises: how do we bring people to their senses, so that they would not feel limited by the warnings, indicating what to be protected, seeing that we have various co-natural possibilities at our hands and we are allowed to decide for them freely, of course on the basis of our knowledge and experience.

The programme for publishing these kind of booklets is being continued. Next one in the line is a booklet about sources and energy consumption. The third book of the Council's reports is being prepared, which includes among others genetics and problems as well as comprehension of research activities. In the programme of environmental editions are included also those about the soil protection and chemicals, bringing benefits and risks. More about biotic diversity, waste and others are to follow.

At present the group of scientists is preparing the environmental glossary (in six languages) with the definitions of notions and phenomena. The idea of glossary was advanced because during the harmonisation of legislation different translations of environmental terms are implemented. On several expert fields, including nature protection, we have commenced managing expert notions and expressions. Lately we became aware that with guidelines of European Union and the use of foreign literature, there aren't only cases of the so called 'implementation' of expert solutions, but also of different translation of foreign words and 'interpretation' of co-naturally adjusted or constant development. Taking this into account we, together with the Council for Study and Environmental Protection attached to SASA, wish to assemble environmental expert expressions, which have already clung and are acceptable, together with the new expressions, which are just appearing and are to be adjusted with the rules. Thus we are longing to prepare a manual which would explain to a wide circle of users, the environmental expressions with the explanation of notions in the Slovene language, next to devices in foreign languages. We have to help schools, different societies, people or even professionals to understand the environmental problems. We hope to finish this work in 2001, respectively before the admittance to the European Union.

We are convinced that our programme doesn't reach too high. Just like in the professional work, where we are striving for quality and latest achievements, the popular journalism is instructive and is a kind of guidance, appropriate for administrative workers, students, teachers and other public. On this field we must not lag behind nations with wealthy culture and tradition, respectively behind achievements of science and culture. Now and previously presented publications are the achievement of collective work and interdisciplinary estimation.

At the end let me state some formal information about our Council.