Q1. To begin, could you briefly describe your professional background and the roles you’ve held across environmental management and municipal governance?

If I look back at my career, it has  been shaped by more than twenty years of working at the intersection of environmental protection, waste and water management, and public administration. What has been consistent throughout is that I have always been close to both decision-making and delivery. I have held senior political roles, but I have also been directly responsible for municipal systems, infrastructure projects, and day-to-day implementation.

I have worked at the local, national, and regional levels, allowing me to follow environmental policy through its entire lifecycle. I have seen how ideas are shaped politically, how they are translated into laws and strategies, and then how they actually play out when municipalities try to implement them with real people, real budgets, and real constraints.

At the municipal level, I served as Deputy Mayor of Herceg Novi, where I was responsible as Project Manager for the Water Supply and Sanitation Adriatic Coast Programme, a project worth forty-five million euros. That role involved coordinating multiple companies and stakeholders and overseeing the implementation of wastewater treatment plants, sewage networks, water supply systems, and supporting infrastructure. Later, as Municipal Manager, I worked on environmental impact assessments, recycling and landfill feasibility studies, and several donor-funded waste management projects.

Earlier in my career, I was Assistant Director of the municipal utility company. In that role, I managed the municipality's Solid Waste Management Plan, introduced modern waste collection systems, and led the implementation of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards. That work was very operational, but it made a real difference in terms of compliance, service quality, and the practical level of seriousness with which environmental responsibilities were taken.

At the national level, I served as President of the Parliament of Montenegro, after previously working as a Member of Parliament. I was part of the Committees on Tourism, Agriculture, Ecology and Spatial Planning, and on European Integration. In both cases, environmental governance and alignment with European Union standards were central themes, not just politically but in terms of what they would mean for municipalities and public services.

Alongside all of this, I worked for almost two decades as a regional expert for NALAS and GIZ. Through that work, I was involved in solid waste data systems, cost and financing models, benchmarking exercises, and EU-aligned waste and marine litter projects across South East Europe.

Across all these roles, what has mattered most to me is making sure that environmental standards do not remain theoretical. My focus has always been on whether decisions taken at the political or strategic level actually result in measurable, sustainable improvements on the ground.

 

Q2. In your experience, what types of environmental or waste management policies look robust at the legislative or strategic level but struggle most during real municipal implementation, and why?

What I have seen repeatedly is that policies which rely heavily on behavioural change and coordination between many institutions are the ones that struggle most during implementation. On paper, waste separation systems, circular economy strategies, and extended producer responsibility schemes often look very solid. Legally and strategically, they are well designed. But when municipalities try to apply them, they often lack the infrastructure, logistics, enforcement capacity, data systems, or communication resources needed to make them work consistently.

Another major challenge comes from the way EU environmental standards are transposed into national legislation. EU directives are ambitious and harmonised, but once they are brought into national law, they pass through very different administrative traditions, legal frameworks, fiscal realities, and governance cultures. Differences in institutional maturity, decentralisation models, procurement rules, and inspection powers lead to uneven implementation.

In some cases, national legislation focuses more on achieving formal legal alignment than on making sure municipalities are actually ready to deliver. That creates situations where everything looks compliant on paper, but delivery capacity simply is not there.

There is also the issue of local reality. Uniform application of EU frameworks does not always account for geographic constraints, legacy infrastructure, informal waste practices, or limited municipal staffing. When legislation fails to adapt its requirements to these conditions, either through phased implementation or realistic enforcement models, policies remain partially implemented or become largely symbolic. That gap between ambition and execution is something I have seen many times, even where legal conformity exists.

 

Q3. What early compromises made for speed, political feasibility, or funding later create long-term operational or compliance challenges?

The compromises that cause the most damage over time are usually made very early. They often involve underinvesting in operational capacity, delaying enforcement mechanisms, or choosing short-term cost savings over long-term system durability. Simplified procurement, limited monitoring systems, and reliance on voluntary compliance can make policies easier to approve politically, but they introduce weaknesses that only become visible later.

Another recurring issue is financing. Many national and municipal authorities lack sufficient self-financing capacity, forcing them to rely on international donors, development banks, or EU funding instruments. That funding is often essential, but it comes with predefined priorities, timelines, and reporting frameworks that may not always align with local institutional realities or long-term needs.

As a result, project designs are sometimes shaped more by donor requirements than by what would work best in the local system. This can lead to situations where technically advanced solutions are adopted without securing the resources needed for long-term maintenance, staffing, enforcement, or data integration.

I have seen municipalities commit to infrastructure and performance targets that they cannot realistically sustain administratively or financially. On paper, everything looks compliant. In practice, implementation increasingly depends on exemptions, renegotiations, or ad hoc fixes.

Over time, this weakens institutional ownership. Systems continue to function, but more through crisis management than through stable governance. That gradually erodes regulatory credibility and public trust.

 

Q4. Which environmental standards or compliance mechanisms have genuinely improved outcomes on the ground, and which have added procedural burden without strengthening execution?

Standards make a real difference when they are directly connected to how services are delivered and controlled in practice. The mechanisms that work best are the ones that clearly assign responsibility, define measurable performance requirements, and include real consequences for non-compliance.

Binding landfill diversion targets, mandatory reporting of waste quantities and flows, and service contracts that link payments to verified service quality or environmental results tend to change behaviour at the operational level. They affect how services are planned, delivered, and monitored.

Traceability and inspection systems are also critical. When municipalities and regulators can actually see what happens to waste at each stage, from collection to treatment and final disposal, standards stop being abstract requirements and become practical management tools.

On the other hand, standards that focus mainly on procedural compliance often add burden without improving outcomes. Excessive documentation, overlapping reporting requirements, and complex certification schemes can consume time and resources while leaving core problems unresolved. When success is measured by submitted paperwork rather than environmental improvement, compliance becomes superficial.

 

Q5. What early warning signs indicate that an environmental project is drifting toward failure, even when formal reporting still appears positive?

The warning signs usually appear on the ground long before they show up in official reports. One of the clearest signals is when people start relying on informal workarounds. Staff, contractors, or municipal services begin bypassing formal procedures just to keep things moving. That may preserve progress on paper, but it usually means the system is not aligned with real capacity.

Another sign is a growing disconnect between official reports and what you hear from the field. When reports are consistently positive, but frontline operators, inspectors, or citizens raise concerns about service quality, environmental impact, or enforcement, it suggests that monitoring is no longer capturing reality. This often happens when attention is focused on outputs rather than outcomes.

A further warning sign is when monitoring systems exist, but the data they produce is not used for decision-making. Reports are submitted, numbers are collected, but they do not lead to corrective action, resource reallocation, or policy adjustment. Monitoring then becomes a formality rather than a governance tool.

Fragmented accountability is another major risk. When responsibility is spread across multiple institutions and no one clearly owns the outcome, problems are addressed through meetings and temporary fixes rather than structural solutions. Over time, adaptation replaces real problem-solving.

When these patterns persist, projects may continue to meet formal milestones, but weaknesses accumulate beneath the surface. At that point, fixing the system becomes much harder and much more expensive.

 

Q6. What forms of resistance are most underestimated during environmental reforms?

Institutional resistance is often underestimated. Middle management, service providers, and frontline staff may support environmental goals in principle, but they resist changes that disrupt established routines, increase accountability, or expose capacity gaps without providing resources or training. When reforms add reporting or enforcement requirements without adjusting staffing, budgets, or authority, implementation slows and becomes procedural rather than meaningful.

Economic resistance is also underestimated. Existing contracts, local business interests, and informal waste-handling practices create hard-to-change incentive structures. These actors rarely oppose reforms openly, but they adapt in ways that protect their interests. If those incentives are not addressed directly, resistance becomes quiet but persistent.

Citizen resistance is particularly important in projects involving waste facilities, treatment plants, transfer stations, or landfills. Even when people support environmental objectives in general, they often oppose specific locations. Concerns about health, environmental impact, property values, and trust in enforcement play a major role. When public engagement is treated as a formality, opposition can escalate into legal challenges, political pressure, and delays. In those cases, social acceptance becomes just as important as technical feasibility.

 

Q7. If you were advising senior public leaders responsible for environmental policy and municipal delivery today, what uncomfortable question about execution risk or institutional readiness do they rarely ask early enough, and what kind of answer should immediately prompt a rethink?

The question that is rarely asked early enough is whether the system will still work if political priorities change, funding becomes tighter, or leadership turns over, and who will actually be responsible for keeping it running.

If the honest answer shows that long-term ownership is unclear, that key functions depend on temporary project teams, or that enforcement and maintenance are not built into permanent institutions, then the design needs to be reconsidered. Environmental systems usually fail not because their objectives are wrong, but because responsibility for daily operation, compliance, and financing is not secured.

Leaders should be especially cautious when implementation relies on special task forces, donor-funded units, or politically driven timelines, particularly when there is no clear plan to integrate these structures into normal administration. When accountability, staffing, or funding is pushed into later phases, execution risk is already built in.

A strategy should be revisited immediately if it cannot clearly show who will manage compliance, how operating costs will be covered once initial funding ends, and how performance will be enforced after political attention shifts. In the end, sustainable environmental policy is defined not by adoption, but by whether institutions are truly prepared to carry it forward under everyday conditions.