Parliamentary budget talks: Large share of funds allocated to environmental issues go unspent
ANKARA – With 2024 just days away, Turkish parliament is deep in a year-end frenzy of budget negotiations.
As the government awaits the parliamentary green light for annual budget proposals to fund various ministries and state affiliates, some opposition parties are raising intense objections to funding requests.
One of the most contested items is the seemingly small allocation of funds – 178,814,000 TL – to the Directorate of Climate Change, which operates under the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change.
Noting the figure represents about 0.06 percent of the Environment Ministry’s total proposed budget, and that the number is far exceeded by the Presidency of Religious Affairs proposed budget, lawmakers with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) submitted a dissenting opinion, stating the government was not prioritizing environmental issues.
This comes as state entities overseeing forested areas and environmental management are chronically underfunded and understaffed. Yet the same state entities do not appear to have fully spent their allocated budgets in recent years, further hindering efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change in Turkey, according to experts monitoring the issue.
Directorate of Climate Change
Turkey’s Directorate of Climate Change was established in 2021, after the country’s accession to the Paris Climate Agreement, with the mandate to create sustainable environmental and climate change policies.
The Directorate’s annual budget for 2022 was 66,716,000 TL. However, by the end of that year just 23,345,000 TL had been spent, slightly more than a third of the allocated amount.
Along similar lines, the 2023 budget proposed for the Directorate was 154,182,000 TL. According to official data, the Directorate spent just 23,996,000 TL of its budget in the first half of the year.
Baran Bozoğlu, chair of the Climate Change Policy and Research Association, said the Directorate of Climate Change was founded with “great intentions” but has so far under-delivered.
“It failed to build an adequate structure to fulfill the responsibilities and duties imposed on it,” Bozoğlu told Turkey recap. “Eventually, the organization was unable to execute projects to use the allocated budget, and the necessary steps in the field were not taken.”
Bozoğlu added the management of the Directorate underlined the low priority given to climate change policies in Turkey.
Paris Climate Agreement
The developments come as Turkey is projected to be one of the worst-affected countries by climate change.
In the face of increasingly frequent floods, droughts and wildfires, Bozoğlu has urged lawmakers to implement climate change policies aimed at preventive measures, instead of narrowly focusing on fighting the consequences of less predictable weather patterns.
The Environment Ministry, Directorate of Climate Change and the General Directorate of Forestry did not respond to requests for comment.
In another dissenting opinion recently submitted to parliament, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) noted the state was lacking the necessary policies to meet emission-reduction goals laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement, which Turkey co-signed by in 2016 and ratified in 2021.
The CHP also highlighted the Presidency of Strategy and Budget’s 12th Development Plan, which oversees spending from 2024-2028, does not specify closure dates for coal-fired power plants – a highly-polluting source of carbon emissions.
Further highlighting the threats of inaction, Bozoğlu cited recent research conducted on 19 major European coastal cities that ranked İstanbul first among areas expected to face the most negative impacts from climate change, sea level rise and meteorological events. İzmir ranked third on the list.
Bozoğlu said he believed state entities had not only insufficient proposed budgets for environmental issues, but also lacked the staff to help mitigate climate impacts.
“In terms of human capacity, a larger workforce is needed, we know there is a shortage of staff,” Bozoğlu said. “It does not seem possible for the Directorate of Climate Change to fulfill its responsibilities with the current budget.”
Forest fire spending
State entities leading efforts to manage forests and wildfires have also failed to make full use of their allocated budgets.
Two separate ministries were allocated a budget of approximately 9.8 billion TL for the “Sustainable Management Program for the Protection of Forests and Nature” in 2023, but less than a third of this amount was spent in the first half of the year.
For 2024, the Ministry of Environment increased this budget allocation to 1,323,162,000 TL, up from 585,450,000 TL in 2023, though 221,644,000 TL were spent in the first half of this year.
The 2024 budget allocated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for the same program will double to 19,651,000 TL in 2024 compared to the previous year.
Over the last decade Turkey lost 560,000 acres of forest to wildfires. According to the General Directorate of Forestry data compiled by Turkey recap, the single biggest annual loss was 344,700 acres of forest in 2021.
That year, simultaneous summer wildfires affected several provinces along the southwestern coastline. As a result, the loss of forest area in 2021 amounted to 61 percent of all forest areas lost in the last decade, sparking public outcry and allegations of inadequate state responses agaisnt the wildfires.
Although the Turkish Aeronautical Association’s firefighting planes, also called the “firebirds” normally play the leading role in fighting forest wildfires, they were not used in 2021. Bekir Pakdemirli, then-Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, said that the planes were “out of service” at the time.
A public controversy followed and the Turkish Aeronautical Association’s planes were re-deployed over the last two years along with rented fire-fighting aircrafts.
2021: Breaking point
Dr. Doğanay Tolunay, a professor at the İstanbul University Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Forestry, defines the 2021 wildfires as a “milestone” in the fight against the forest fires. After the events, he said Turkey increased the number of helicopters and planes in its firefighting fleet.
At the same time, the General Directorate of Forestry began collaborating with the Turkish military and police forces, which grant access to additional helicopters as backups, Tolunay said. With this support, Turkey’s firefighting fleet now tops 100 aircrafts in total.
Still, Tolunay underlined the lack of personnel remains a problem. He cited the firefighting trucks used during the forest fires as an example.
“There must be at least six people in one [fire truck], excluding the driver,” Tolunay told Turkey recap. “When necessary, the hose must be pulled hundreds of meters. This is even more difficult on sloping terrain. Considering all these [factors], there should be at least six people on one truck, but this number had dropped to two” in the 2021 wildfires.
According to Tolunay, the General Directorate of Forestry requested 10,000 staff but received about half, and about 3,000 of them were employed as forest fire workers.
“Efforts are being made to overcome this problem with temporary solutions, but it is not enough,” he said.
Lack of personnel
Hasan Türkyılmaz, chair of the Chamber of Forest Engineers, noted reports by the General Directorate of Forestry suggest Turkey’s forest cover at the end of 2022 reached 57,440,000 acres, or nearly 30 percent of the country’s total surface area.
Türkyılmaz said 22,000 firefighters were staffed to cover this area, noting there remains a critical shortage of staff and technical personnel and an urgent need to increase recruitment.
“Currently, the General Directorate of Forestry still needs a total of 20,000-25,000 personnel in several branches,” Türkyılmaz told Turkey recap.
He added, “Around 10,000 engineers have graduated and are expecting to join the workforce. But the issue is not finding jobs for unemployed engineers. The issue is keeping our forests, our ’Green Homeland’ unharmed.”
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This article is part of a series of environmental reports produced with support from the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Turkey Office, and in no way can be interpreted to reflect the views of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.