Skewed image of environmental conditions - a paltry 2.5 percent are rejected

Three out of four applications for environmental permits are given the green light by Swedish courts and during the period 2020-2021, only 10 applications have been rejected, according to a survey conducted by Di.

https://www.di.se/hallbart-naringsliv/skev-bild-av-miljotillstanden-ynka-2-5-procent-far-avslag/

All of Sweden risked stopping and hundreds of thousands of jobs were at stake. This is how it sounded last summer after the Supreme Land and Environmental Court rejected an application for a mining permit from Cementa because its environmental impact statement was considered deficient.

Since then, several cases have attracted attention where large companies have not received their applications or where the processing has been considered to take a disproportionately long time. The Liberals recently described the permit processes as Kafkaesque and proposed several changes. The moderate party leader Ulf Kristersson has also recently emphasized that "the environmental code needs to be fundamentally reviewed".

But the high-profile cases belong to a minority, shows a survey Di made of the last two years' judgments at the Land and Environmental Court.

Of the 393 applications to conduct either environmentally hazardous activities or water activities, where a final judgment has been handed down during the period, only ten have been rejected, which corresponds to a share of 2.5 percent.

"Companies are rarely rejected. What has now been noticed, especially with Cementa and LKAB, is that the licensing authorities rejected a couple of applications on the grounds that they have been deficient. And my impression is that it has happened on good grounds ", says Jonas Ebbesson, professor of environmental law at Stockholm University.

During the last two-year period, 18 cases have been rejected and thus not tried on the merits, which often happens when the court considers that an application is incomplete, as in Cementa's cases. 37 cases have been written off, which may be due to the application being withdrawn, and 31 cases have had the outcome “other”. This may, for example, mean that a permit granted in a partial judgment had specific conditions, such as a probationary period, which is revoked.

297 of the 393 cases have been fully or partially approved.

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise has sharply criticized the Swedish permit processes.

"Among the major players I have talked to, almost all of them testify to major problems in the permit processes," says Nicklas Skår, environmental expert at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.

But considering how few cases are rejected, isn't it bad of big companies like Cementa to fall for it?"It's not that simple. If you look at Cementa, many people say that they made a bad application, but we let an independent law firm review it. And they came to the conclusion that it was an excellent application. The fact that you do not get through an application does not necessarily mean that you have done something wrong ", says Nicklas Skår.

Jonas Ebbesson, on the other hand, believes that the storm of criticism against the permit processes and the role of the authorities in them came about because Cementa did not obey the feedback they received early in the case.

Another company that has encountered a patrol in court is LKAB. The mining giant was denied a new permit for extended ore mining in October because property owners with geothermal heat in Kiruna had not been invited to consult in a correct manner. In that particular case, Jonas Ebbesson considers that it seems to have taken an unreasonably long time for the court, three years, to arrive at the decision to reject the application.

But in general, he believes that it is important that the trials take time, especially when it comes to new facilities.

"It must be serious trials. When you build large infrastructure facilities, it has effects for decades, perhaps centuries. Although some individual traders can get frustrated at times, it is important that it is done in this way, for both the quality and legitimacy of the decisions, ”he says.

Getting a clear overview of the average time interval between an application being received and a permit being granted is difficult because this is often announced in a partial judgment. The median time from the time an application is received to the time a final decision is made, on the other hand, is between 356 and 378 days in four of the country's five land and environmental courts.

The fifth region, Umeå, stands out with 550 days of median processing. One reason, Nicklas Skår believes, may be the type of business that submits applications there.

“Some businesses such as mines have disproportionately long processing times. And it has nothing to do with the environmental impact but that there is a strong opinion, which means that the authorities, in order not to receive criticism, include all sorts of conceivable issues. It may be okay with four years for a new mine, but the average time we have calculated is seven to eight years, ”says Nicklas Skår.

The changes to the permit procedure, in order to speed up the processes, that politicians demand should be made in the right way, says Jonas Ebbesson.

"Of course, there is no end in itself to making court proceedings cumbersome. "Any change that can be made to streamline the processes, without losing quality or control, is welcome," he says.