Environmental Policy in Poland

Abstract

In the 1950s, Poland embarked on a rapid transformation from an agrarian nation to an industrial one along the lines of the Soviet development paradigm. Among the issues the socialist system in Poland was unable to address, the deteriorating state of the environment was one of the most striking. A decree of the Council of Ministers at the beginning of 1983 officially designated twenty-seven "areas of ecological hazard" comprising approximately 11% of the country's territory and 12.9 million people, i.e., 35% of the population (World Bank, 1989).