Volume 31 (2020): Issue 4 (December 2020)

This paper aims to discuss the place of environmental right in the system of the 1950 European Convention – a fundamental Council of Europe treaty on protection of human rights. Interestingly, it does not explicitly guarantee the environmental right, it needs to be determined; therefore, if individuals can cite violations of this right in their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights – the authority guarding obedience to the European Convention. Analysis of the Strasbourg decisions implies the environmental right can be applied to highly diverse situations. In practice, complainants cite its infringements in connection with violations of the right to private and family life as incorporated in Article 8 of the European Convention. This does not mean, however, every time a complainant cites Article 8 of the European Convention to accuse a state of breaching their environmental rights, the European Court is going to accept such a charge.

The study presents the results of nine-year-long monitoring of the population size of amphibians (Amphibia) as one of the indicator communities used to assess the biological diversity level. The study was conducted in the Masurian Landscape Park located in Warmińsko-MazurskieVoivodeship. The obtained results demonstrated that 13 out of the 18 domestic amphibian species occurred in the area selected for research activities, including the species entered in the IUCN Red List. No clear correlation was found between the dynamics of population changes and the environmental, primarily climatic, determinants.

Legal regulations concerning the structure and functioning of the Management Board of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management are presented in this article. The analysis is based on the doctrine and judicial practice addressing interpretation of regulations concerning the authority. Membership, the procedures of appointing and dismissing the Fund’s Management Board, its tasks, modes of sitting and resolving, as well as documentation of its activities are discussed.

In the last decades, Poland has become the leader in mushroom Agaricus bisporus production in Europe. Mushroom production generates large amounts of spent substrate, which as a waste material must be recycled. Significant in this macronutrient content, inducing nitrogen, encourages the use of this organic waste material to fertilize, especially light soils. The aim of the study was to assess the effect of spent mushroom substrate fertilization on the properties of A horizon of the Stagnic Luvisol, especially for the variation in the nitrogen fraction, in the two-year cultivation period. The following laboratory analyses were performed: soil pH, organic carbon content, total content of nitrogen and sorption properties. The sequential extraction of nitrogen compounds was performed with a 0.25 M KCl solution (for the extraction of mineral nitrogen forms and the most labile organic nitrogen compounds) and with 0.25 and 2.5 M H₂SO₄ (hot hydrolysis for sequencing of organic nitrogen compounds that are easily hydrolysing and difficult to hydrolyse). The application of spent mushroom substrate to the A horizons of the experimental objects had an effect on differentiation of soil properties and increased their value (pH, Corg, N-tot, Hh, CEC) in comparison to the control object to a greater degree after the first, then after the second year of cultivation. As the content of nitrogen mineral forms was differentiated, more nitrogen was found in an ammonium form (N-NH₄) than in a nitrate form (N-NO_x). The organic nitrogen content formed the following series of increasing amounts: soluble organic nitrogen N_OS < N_OEH < N_ODH < N_ONH.