The environment of Belgium is affected by the high population density in most of the country. Water quality suffers from a relatively low percentage of sewage wastewater treatment and from historical pollution accumulated in sediments. Air quality is affected by emissions from traffic and house heating. Biodiversity is low because of destruction and fragmentation of habitats. In the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index, Belgium was ranked lowest of the EU member countries for overall environmental performance.
Since the 1993 State Reform, the environment is a regional responsibility, with the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels-Capital Regions responsible for environmental matters in their respective territories. This has led to differences in legislation and separation of measurements and publication of statistics.
Read more about Environment Of Belgium: Air, Water, Soil, Noise, Biodiversity, Protected Areas
Famous quotes containing the word environment:
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)