The Clean Air Act of the Czech Republic and Light Pollution -- the proposed change and amendment of the Act

Jenik Hollan, hollan at ped.muni.cz

Some more info:

Czech Republic has recognized Light Pollution as a pollution of the atmosphere in its Act valid since June 1, 2002, see the main night-conservation directory.

The Act itself demanded the government to issue the implementation set of rules. This did not happen, due to strong lobbying of the advocates of the current lighting practice and due to low interest of the relevant ministry clerks in the issue.

As the experience from all over the world shows, detailed rules concerning (at least) the future lighting changes have to be contained in the law itself, otherwise either no will ever exist, or some counterproductive ones will be issued.

A proposal of the needed change of the Czech law had been offered to the discussion by the night-conservationists all over the world. The basic document is lp_en_ex.pdf, a version with detailed comments.

A good template emerged out of it, see a draft from Nov 22, 2004, as a html version or a MSword version.

I should stress, that non-commented versions of the amendment or of the template should not be used without the commented version, if you are not experts on Italian legislation on LP (on which my proposal is based) and don't know all relevant papers by Pierantonio Cinzano.

The amendment as submitted in November 2003 (not supported by the House, due to lack of any lobby in favour of it) is available both as a html version and MSword version. The differences from preceding draft versions are marked here: html, MSword.

An Explanatory Report to the proposed change of the law is lp_en_why.pdf (a html version should work too), giving the most relevant references.

The proposal can be changed now, for sumbission in spring 2005, if you find some change as important. It is a serious issue, the Act, if supplemented according to this proposal, would become an important precedent for at least the European legislation, so it should be good indeed.

(I've been able to improve some details in 2003 thanks to an expert lawyer help, see the file changelog.)