Although Bosnia and Herzegovina is a signatory to the Aarhus Convention, it has still not ratified its key supplement — the PRTR Protocol — which requires publicly accessible registers of releases and transfers of harmful substances from industrial facilities into air, water, and soil. This protocol is essential for ensuring transparency, polluter accountability, and timely public access to environmental information.
Although both entities and the Brčko District maintain partially developed pollutant registers, there is no agreement on unifying these databases and submitting the data as a single system to international bodies such as the European Commission and the European Environment Agency.
Therefore, the Network of Aarhus Centers in Bosnia and Herzegovina has submitted two important initiatives to the relevant institutions. The first initiative concerns launching the procedure for ratifying the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR Protocol), while the second calls for the development of a regulation or guideline that would establish a unified reporting system at the state level.
