Water Governance in the Context of IWRM: Switzerland - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 128

(FC 138, 139, 140). A number of provisions are present in the Swiss federal
constitution (FC), which guarantee access to legal proceedings and the courts
(Arts. 29-33 and 64FC). Switzerland's judiciary is independent of the executive and
the legislature, with the Federal Court ( Bundesgericht ) being generally viewed as
being an effective and independent institution. Rights in legal and judicial proceedings
for civil society as well as organisations are embedded in the FC as well as in a
number of Federal Acts, namely, the Federal Judiciary Act (FJA), Federal
Administrative Act, Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and the Federal Law on
the Principle of Administrative Transparency (LTrans). The right of appeal for inter-
ested civil society/environmental organisations ( Verbandsbeschwerderecht ) to chal-
lenge decisions in court, which may affect their members' interest, was initially
introduced in 1983 in the referendum on the EPA (Art. 55).
The complex governing process, while it ensures a consensus is built, does mean
that laws can be difficult to implement, and the process of change or implementation
is very slow and potentially difficult (Uhlmann Brögli and Wehrli 2008 ) . In enforc-
ing the law, the federal government tends to utilise a hands off approach, but can
wield some form of soft enforcement power in terms of financial incentives and
subsidies for the implementation of certain principles in projects at the canton and
commune level. Under the terms of the Neue fi nanzausgleich (NFA 2008 ) , com-
munes can receive greater subsidies for projects from the cantons and federal funds
if they meet certain criteria (participative planning, integrated risk management,
ecological aspects and technical aspects).

7.2.2 Transparency

Transparency indicators generally score well in the assessment, though issues were
raised in terms of quality, quantity and coherence of certain hydrologic data set
across regions, particularly in the Alpine areas. Despite Switzerland's reputation as
the nation of banking secrecy, legal provisions for access to environmental informa-
tion preceded those in the rest of Europe. In general, access to environmental infor-
mation is perceived to work effectively in Switzerland, although concerns were
raised with aspects of implementation in some of the more remote Alpine areas. The
30-day notification period was seen to be limiting when dealing with some com-
munes that may be far away in the mountains, and/or adverse to environmental
organisations, and therefore do not want to give them the report, no matter what
rights are provided in the law to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
Additionally, EIAs are outsourced to private bureaus, which can undermine the
objectivity of the report. Instances where such bureaus simply do not know thor-
oughly the detail of the Water Protection Act (WPA), and mistakes are made in how
the law should be interpreted and implemented, have also transpired. However, in
the time period 1997-2007, there were no court cases or judicial proceedings relat-
ing to provisions for environmental information (Kölz and Brunner 2007 ) .