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Poland ENVIRONMENT AND POLLUTION
Poland suffered as heavily as any other East European
country
from the environmental negligence inherent in the central
planning approach to resource development. Although some
warnings
reached the public during the 1980s, the communist regimes
typically had portrayed economic activity in the
capitalist
countries as the true enemy of the environment.
Investigations
after 1989 revealed that enormous damage had been
inflicted on
water, air, and soil quality and on forests, especially
surrounding the industrial centers in Upper Silesia and
the
Kraków region. But because the economy had depended for
over
forty years on unrestrained abuse of Poland's natural
resources,
environmental planners in the early 1990s faced the
prospect of
severe economic disruption if they abruptly curtailed the
industrial practices causing pollution.
Data as of October 1992
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