EarthAction

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons enters into force

EarthAction celebrates that on January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force. We share this news as written by The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN):

"More than 75 years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the treaty banning these weapons with catastrophic humanitarian consequences enters into force. The countries that have joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons are bound to adhere to the treaty’s prohibitions and implement its obligations. The treaty’s normative impact will grow as states parties and civil society push for its full implementation and universalisation.

“Nuclear weapons have always been immoral, now they are illegal,” Beatrice Fihn, ICAN Executive Director said. “ The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a victory for all people, made possible by the efforts of civil society and the international community. A handful of nations have held the world hostage with these horrific weapons. With the treaty we break those chains and chart a new course to a world free of nuclear weapons.”

21 January 2021 is a critical milestone towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Around the world, ICAN campaigners are marking the historic day with at least 172 events, from commemorations to protests to educational events. There are protestors at institutions around the world including companies, banks, universities that are contributing to nuclear weapons to make clear this behaviour is now banned under international law. At nuclear weapon bases and laboratories activists are hanging banners. Diplomats and officials are rallying behind the treaty. Campaigners in countries that have joined the treaty are celebrating the leadership of their countries to bring the first international legal ban on nuclear weapons into force.

The entry into force of the TPNW is a day of paramount importance for ICAN and for international peace and security. It is the start of a new chapter: the end of nuclear weapons."

See more at: https://www.icanw.org/tpnw_enters_into_force

Peace is not everything, but everything is nothing without peace. No to war, militarism, and violence

The Doomsday Clock has moved for the first time in history to just 100 seconds to midnight. The
Nobel prize winners “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" justify this move by citing the
dangers of atomic war and the consequences of climate change. The dangers of a great
cataclysmic war have increased in view of the rivalries of the great powers, as have the quantity
and quality of regional conflicts and wars over resources and as consequences of climate
change. Wars are inseparable components of the "new normal."

Peace is not only the absence of war; it covers all dimensions of human existence and the
existence of nature. Peace means global justice and always includes climate justice. This is the
struggle for peace that the World Social Forum has waged since its conception, particularly
related to US interventionism. It is also a struggle against military confrontations wherever they
exist.

For these reasons we are planning on the one hand several public online discussions on the
ongoing military conflicts in West Asia (Yemen, Syria and Palestine) as well as on the
involvement of NATO in Eastern European countries like Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan. On
the other hand, we are going to deal with the militarization of internal political conflicts,
especially in countries where the pandemic has led to an extreme polarization between
authoritarian regimes and its peoples. Some further notes:

1. Anti-militarism today is a rejection of and pressure against the biggest military alliance in
   the world: NATO and its ∼1000 military bases.
2. Special attention should be given to the economic and ecological reasons as well as the
   humanitarian consequences of the ongoing militarization processes in regards to
   repression, human rights violations, and the forced migration of millions of people.
3. Central to militarism is the gross excess of spending on military arms. 2 trillion US dollars
   per year cause deaths on a daily basis are partly responsible for poverty and hunger
   around the world. Disarmament is a central challenge for peace engagement and just
   shaping of the future.
4. Militaristic structures in individual countries and internationally also destroy democracy
   and participation; anti-militarism is therefore always also a struggle for democracy.
5. Small arms are the "weapons of mass destruction" of the 21st century. The daily killing
   and murdering with such weapons demand peace-based political and social responses
   and an international ban.

In all these panel discussions, the audience should be given the opportunity to deliberate the
strategies and mobilizations which not only engage the traditional peace movement, but also
activists, experts, and opinion leaders from other thematic areas like global justice, cultural
diversity, and climate change.

The 24th of January should reflect the diversity of these issues and the central challenge for
peace and global justice.

Reiner Braun, International Peace Bureau; Leo Gabriel, Prague Spring 2, network against far-
right extremism and populism; Kristine Karch, International network ‘No to war - No-to-NATO’.

Read more here

2020 EarthAction Report

2020 EarthAction Report

A Brief Overview of EarthAction’s Projects & Campaigns

2020 Action

Every month, 2020 Action and the 2020 Action Education Fund, both projects of EarthAction, educate and mobilize thousands of US citizens encouraging them to communicate with US policymakers on critically important peace and environmental issues. Each month, 2020 produces a timely Action Alert with meaningful actions for citizens to take to protect our environment and security—usually to contact a policymaker facing a critical decision. For details, read 2020’s 2020 Action Report at 2020Action.org. This is 2020 Action’s 35^th year!

Support for Indigenous Peoples—Save Our Spirits Fund

In 2020, we expanded our collaboration with the Save Our Spirits (SOS) Fund to provide increased support for indigenous and ancestral communities around the world to help them preserve, strengthen, and pass on the spiritual practices and ceremonies and the wisdom of their elders.

This year, EarthAction made SOS grants to support the work of the following groups:

The Elders Project (TEP) in Colombia: We continued to work with and provide assistance to the traditional authorities (Mamos) of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta (SNSM) in Colombia. Rick Harlow, the Project Director, made trips to Colombia to work directly with the traditional authorities to help strengthen their spiritual and traditional practices.

Indigenous Peoples Healing Fire at Assonet in Massachusetts was held on Saturday, November 28^th. It was organized by members of the Wampanoag Tribe. We hope this will help to lay the foundation for a permanent Indigenous Healing Ceremony Circle in the greater Boston area.

The Lalakea Foundation for their Nā Wāhine ʻĀpapalani, Hawaiian women cultural practitioners who have been conducting ritual and ceremony on Maunakea for many years and who are dedicated to honoring the sacred Piko O Wākea through prayer, chant and ceremony that acknowledge Nā Kānaka o ka Mauna, Deities of the Mountain, and form connectivity with the sacred through space and time. This project will extend into 2021.

Several Villages in the Hopi Community for their COVID-19 Emergency Response: Hopi Contact Tracing Project. This project will extend into 2021 and train people within the community to carry out contact tracing in a number of Hopi villages that are being hard-hit by the pandemic.

The Cordillera Peoples Alliance, Philippines to assist them with their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the distribution of food relief consisting of rice, sugar, salt and cooking oil to a total of 500 families of indigenous people among the Ayangan tribe in the province of Ifugao. They also shared information on COVID-19 and held discussions on food security during the relief distribution in communities and conducted psycho-social sessions among vulnerable groups such as farmers, elders, youth, and informal workers.

Grass-Roots Organization for Women (GROW) in Ghana, for support of their project: Community-based Initiatives to Address the Impact of Corona-19 Virus Pandemic in Rural Indigenous and Local Communities. They are strengthening outreach to prevent the spread of infection and addressing emerging public health issues that impact vulnerable populations in rural areas who lack access to essential services.

Kitanglad Integrated NGOs Inc. (KIN), in Philippines for support of their program: Indigenous Womens Relief Against COVID-19 by Nurturing Culture and Nature. From May through August, KIN provided food and other support to community members, especially women, mothers and youths and their families belonging to the Daraghuyan-Bukidnon Tribe of Dalwangan in Malaybalay City, and the Talaandig Tribe of Songco, Lantapan, and Mt. Nebo, Valencia City. These tribal beneficiaries are partners in forest protection, biodiversity conservation and cultural survival of the tribes of Mts. Kitanglad Range Natural Park and the Mt. Kalatungan Range Natural Park.

Samdhana Institute, Philippines to assist with a response to the COVID pandemic to provide food relief to Erumanen ne Menuvu tribe (Manobo) in Southern Bukidnon, Philippines. Four hundred selected Menuvu families received food relief, to help them survive through the difficult period of the pandemic until they are able to plant for their own food.

Other Campaigns

Throughout the year, EarthAction engaged in many global campaigns for peace, justice and protection of the environment through our website and social media. For example, working with others, we helped to end the construction of hundreds of dangerous dams in Bosnia & Herzegovina, thus protecting Europe’s last remaining wild rivers! For details visit: www.earthaction.org.

Thank You

EarthAction thanks all our Partner Organizations, individual members, donors and Board members for their ongoing participation and support. Special thanks to the Thomas D. Hormel Trust, the Stewart R. Mott Foundation, and the Save Our Spirits Fund.

Let's Celebrate the TPNW

 

On January 22^nd, the world will celebrate the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons, supported by over 120 states at the UN in July 2017.

 

On this historic day, we call on members of the IPB family, our friends and all peace lovers to celebrate this historical step, and deliver this great news with noise and fun in your countries all across the globe, as the road to a world free of nuclear weapons is now wide open!

 

We invite you to join us for a virtual IPB Zoom party where we will celebrate this milestone toward nuclear disarmament together.

 

During the celebration, we want to pay tribute to generations of activists that have tirelessly raised awareness about the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The victims of these bombings and the survivors, the Hibakusha are in our hearts to celebrate together a new era: nuclear weapons are officially illegal when the TPNW will enter into force.

 

Our party will start at 1 p.m. CET and last approximately until 3 p.m. CET on Friday the 22^nd of January.

 

You can look forward to drinking one (or many) of our delicious signature TPNW cocktails in the company of fellow supporters of peace and disarmament.  We have a couple of surprise virtual guests and activities prepared for you but you will have to come and see by yourself!

 

You can attend by signing up to the event here: https://bit.ly/ipbprt

In Response to Global Call to Protect Europe’s Last Wild Rivers, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Ends Subsidies for Small Hydropower Projects

EarthAction’s Partner Organizations Helped to Win this Victory!

 

I hope you are well! In case you have not yet heard, I wanted to let you know that last week the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) announced that starting in 2021, the government would no longer provide subsidies that support the construction of small hydropower plants. I have been working with Marsela Pecanac and Lejla Kusturica at Atelier for Community Transformation and Ulli Eichelmann at Riverwatch on a press release that includes the logos and boilerplates from the original coalition members who signed onto the September press release. I have attached the new press release here. 

 

We are not looking for quotes this time--just confirmation that you'd like to be listed on the press release. We are aiming to get this out on Thursday, so I need to hear back from you by the end of the day tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 2. If I don't hear back from you by then, we'll remove your logo and boilerplate in the version that goes out to reporters Thursday (we can still add it back in on the online version). 

 

Please let me know if you have any questions and thank you for your ongoing support!

 

Lindsay, Director of Media Relations, Global Wildlife Conservation

 

Read more

Nominations for Prestigious UN Award Opens

Nominations for the 2021 Land for Life Award of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) opened today. The submission of nominees will close after two months, on 28 January 2021.
 
The Award recognizes initiatives to halt, reduce and/or reverse land degradation that have had a positive impact on people and their land by using a holistic approach as well as practices that address both the environmental and social aspects of land management.
Under the theme “Healthy Land, Healthy Lives,” the 2021 Award will spotlight changemakers doing innovative land restoration and conservation that is both promoting the well-being of communities and improving their relationship with nature. It will reflect land as part of the solution, as the communities around the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and build back better around a social contract for nature.
 
Winners will be invited to present their projects and work at international forums, including the Kubuqi International Desertification Forum in China, where the Award Ceremony will take place in mid-2021, and at the Fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention at the end of 2021.   These forums offer winners special access to potential new funding partners and stakeholders.
 
Previous winners include World Vision (Australia), SEKEM (Egypt), Watershed Organization Trust (India) and Réseau MARP (Burkina Faso).

By winning the prestigious award, some have expanded their projects, secured new partnerships or been recognized by other international and national awards.

Mr. Tony Rinaudo, World Vision Australia, said “The Land for Life Award has played a significant role in lifting the profile of a relatively obscure intervention – Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) globally, giving it wider visibility and validating it as an effective tool in land and tree restoration. […] Today, FMNR is a normal part of the development lexicon when it comes to land restoration approaches and is considered a ‘best practice’ by many donors and development practitioners alike.”
“So much has awareness grown that the flagship intervention being promoted by the Global Evergreening Alliance, a coalition of NGOs, conservation groups, research institutions and professionals – is FMNR. In the seven years since World Vision was granted the Land for Life Award, the practice of FMNR, and individuals promoting it, have gone onto win other nationally and internationally significant awards,” Mr Rinaudo said.

”In our quest to establish a new social contract for nature and ensure a healthier and safer future for all, we need to promote the connection between people and their environment, on the one hand, and focus on innovative approaches that involve communities, empower women and promote new technologies on the other. In these uncertain times where a growing number of infectious diseases is coming through land use change, we are searching for positive and inspiring models that are creating healthy lives by turning degrading land into healthy land,” says Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.
 
The Land for Life Award also has a special China Award that celebrates exceptional commitment to sustainable land management in China.
 
Elion Foundation is the main sponsor of the Land for Life Programme, but leads the special China Award together with the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Ministry of Science and Technology, and Provincial Governmental of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Additional Quotes from Previous Winners:
Ms. Marcella D’Souza, WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies (W-CReS):  "The L4L Award helped us connect and engage with the ELD Secretariat at the GIZ based out of Bonn, who we had met at Kubuqi. This resulted in a new project on Economic Valuation of regenerating degraded lands through Watershed Development, implemented by our research unit - the WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies (W-CReS). In addition, the Award and the exposure it provided us helped transition our watershed-focussed interventions to a more holistic ecosystems-based approach targeted at building adaptive capacities and resilience of rural communities to climate and non-climate risks. This led to another partnership and project with the ambition to develop a state level "Roadmap for Ecosystems-based Adaptation" which involves multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral engagement and collaboration across scales."

Mr. Mathieu Ouédraogo, Réseau MARP: “Winning the Land for Life Award is certainly a great honor, but above all a major opportunity. This distinction led the communities we work with to be more thorough in the actions they carry out daily, focusing on tangible results. Quantitatively, we have doubled our objective in terms of achievements in the field, thanks to the worldwide recognition of our efforts.”

Mr. Awadalla Hamid, Practical Action Sudan: “The award has definitely a great impact on the project and the life of the people of Darfur, as we managed to secure an additional fund for a second phase of the same project, 10M Euros from the European Union to support more families in Wadi ElKu project area, and to cover additional 180km along the Wadi ElKu Catchment in North Darfur.”

About the UNCCD

For further information regarding the rules and criteria, visit the Land for Life Award webpage.
 
Contact person : Caroline Galipeau, Coordinator of the Land for Life Programme, [email protected]

URGENT APPEAL: Stop the demolition of the monument of Macliing Dulag, Pedro Dungoc, Lumbaya Gayudan and other heroes of the Anti-Chico Dams Struggle

We appeal for your urgent support to prevent the demolition of the monument of Macliing Dulag, Pedro Dungoc, Lumbaya Gayudan and other heroes of the historic Anti-Chico Dam Resistance!

This afternoon, the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) received a notice from the Upper Kalinga District Engineering Office (UKDEO) of the Department of Public Works and Highways saying that the heroes’ monument encroached on a portion of the national road. The notice of demolition states that we are given seven (7) days from receipt of the notice to voluntarily remove the monument. If we fail to do so, UKDEO will remove the monument and charge the costs that will be incurred to the Cordillera Peoples Alliance and that they will resort to proper sanctions provided for by existing laws and rules of the government. There was no due process or dialogues held with the CPA on the matter. They want to make us pay for the cost of their sacrilegious acts. These heroes died from the hands of the government and now their legacy is bound to be killed once more. This is downright tyranny!

Last week, the PNP Provincial Advisory Council of the Kalinga Provincial Police Office requested the provincial government through the Provincial Board Committee on Oversight to enact a resolution to address the removal of the heroes’ monument.

The monument was built by the Cordillera Peoples Alliance in 2017, together with the families of the heroes and martyrs as well as people from Bugnay, the site of the monument. It was built to honor the legacy of our heroes and martyrs who successfully opposed the Marcos Dictatorship’s Chico Dams Project that would have brought massive destruction to the communities, culture and environment of the people of Kalinga and Mountain Province. It is a reminder to present and future generations of the valiant struggle by our elders to defend the ancestral land. It is a reminder of the Butbut tribe’s place in the history of the Chico valley, the Cordillera, the country, and the world.

It has been more than 3 years since the monument was built but it is only now that UKDEO and the police are raising the issue of encroachment and using this as an excuse to dismantle the monument. The DPWH should have stopped the construction from the start if indeed there was a violation. The people of Bugnay including Macliing Dulag’s family had welcomed the project and even helped build the monument on their ancestral land.

Demolition of the monument is tyranny especially at this time of COVID-19 pandemic! These heroes deserve the utmost respect of the people and the government. Their monument deserves to be in a place of honor within their ancestral domain.

Demolishing the monument is double injustice to the Anti-Chico Dams heroes. Macliing Dulag was shot dead by members of the Philippine Army led by Lieutenant Leodegardo Adalem on April 24, 1980. Until now, justice has not been served. Now his monument along with other heroes and martyrs is also bound to be destroyed.

To demolish and desecrate the monument is a brazen act of obliterating the Cordillera people’s history of struggle against oppression and injustice. It is part of the government’s acts of historical revisionism or distorting and erasing the true history of the people’s resistance and heroism which remain relevant until today.

This threat to demolish the heroes’ monument is another attack against the people, the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, and against our heroes and martyrs who resisted development aggression and State repression. It is a part of the implementation of Executive Order 70 or the “Whole of Nation” approach to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (ELCAC) whereby communities and even local government units are being pressured and forced to comply. Historical revisionism is no doubt one of the goals of ELCAC.

Help save the monument from destruction!

The following are some of the ways you can help:

1. Send letters of concern to stop and prevent the demolition to the following, and furnish us a copy through [email protected]:

1. 1.  Eugene M. Batalao

            District Engineer

            Upper Kalinga District Engineering Office

            Department of Public Works and Highways

            Email: [email protected]

       b.  Khadaffy Tanggol

                       Regional Director

                       Department of Public Works and Highways – Cordillera

                       Email: [email protected]

                   c. General R’win Pagkalinawan

                       Director, Police Regional Office – Cordillera

                       Email: [email protected]

                   d. Andres B. Ngao-i

                       Chairman, Philippine National Police Provincial Advisory Council

                       Bulanao, Tabuk City, Kalinga

                       Email: [email protected]

2. Issue statements of condemnation against the demolition of the heroes’ monument and post your stories and opinions.

3. Sign the online petition to stop the demolition of the monument at http://chng.it/9ydD8hK2c6

4. Support the Defend the Cordillera campaign against plunder and State terror. Sign the Global Pact at ph. Watch what's the campaign is all about here.

For more information, please read:

• Alert (October 5, 2020) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D9Pl63ty6A1wi41LwH18kqth5Hp4lQ31/view?usp=sharing
• Open Letter to the Butbut tribe (October 7, 2020) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D9Pl63ty6A1wi41LwH18kqth5Hp4lQ31/view?usp=sharing
• Demolition notice from the Upper Kalinga District Engineering Office (October 1, 2020) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D9Pl63ty6A1wi41LwH18kqth5Hp4lQ31/view?usp=sharing

For inquiries, please contact the Cordillera Peoples Alliance regional secretariat at [email protected], [email protected].

Thank you for your support and solidarity!

CORDILLERA PEOPLES ALLIANCE

EarthAction Save Our Spirits — Call for Proposals

Mission: Save Our Spirits, SOS, is a fund established to support traditional communities to preserve and protect their sacred environments, cultures, spiritual teachings, practices, and wisdom.

Diverse native peoples have been here for millennia, sharing the landscape with a world full of diverse life. SOS seeks to support traditional communities who continue to live on and traverse these landscapes and who use their traditional knowledge of the land, waters, climate, flora and fauna to maintain spiritual balance and ensure cultural and environmental continuity and sustainability for themselves, others, and the future.

SOS provides grants to traditional communities in support of projects to:

• Protect Nature: mountains, forests, deserts, rivers, lakes, the oceans, the air, the soils and all plants and animals. All are interconnected living entities and home to the Spirits that are to be respected and nourished. To this end, we support projects that use ceremonies, ritual, and traditional knowledge that are founded on a reverence for life and encourage the well-being of people, animals, plants, Spirits, the Earth, and the Cosmos. These principles are often called ‘deep ecology’.
• Sustain and share the traditional knowledge, teachings and spiritual practices of their shamans, elders, and wisdom keepers to preserve and enhance their spiritual practices and traditional values and ways of living in harmony and balance with water, fire, air and earth. This includes practices and beliefs that are understood through vision and prophesy.

SOS seeks to support projects that align with its mission. Priority is given to initiatives in the following areas:

• Ceremony, ritual, and related meetings and gatherings that need or should be done as the world transitions
• Meetings and gatherings to restore balance in the land, in traditional communities, and between Nature and communities
• Environmental restoration and conservation projects in accordance with the principles of deep ecology
• Promotion of transboundary indigenous and conservation collaboration
• Emergency support of urgent conservation and community issues
• Responses to long-term threats from industrial and resource development
• Intergenerational transmission of traditional spiritual knowledge to future generations and the wider community
• Traditional lifeways, spiritual practices and culture including subsistence herding and farming
• Experiential education and outreach
• Limited general funding for community leaders, organizations, advocacy and community organizing in the above areas

Please note: Save Our Spirits does not generally support technology purchases, general public festivals and events, or direct legal or law enforcement work. It focuses on animistic beliefs and shamanic practices over other spiritual belief systems and practices.

To apply for a grant from the SOS Fund:

Please send us a letter of inquiry with one to two-page description of your project as an attachment to an email, or by mail. We will send you a reply and let you know if we have any questions and if you are invited to submit a more complete proposal. Project descriptions and proposals are accepted and reviewed on a continual basis. Grant awards for 2020 generally range from US$5,000 to US$10,000.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Save Our Spirits is a project within EarthAction, a non-profit educational and charitable US based organization.

Please send your letter of inquiry and a one to two-page proposal to:

Lois Barber, Advisor, Save Our Spirits,

c/o EarthAction

Mail: PO Box 63, Amherst, MA, 01004 USA

Email: [email protected],

Tel: +1 413 427-8827

Support for SOS Projects is made possible from the SOS Fund of the Whatcom Community Foundation based in Bellingham, Washington in the USA.

Thank You John

The world has lost a legend.

In the statement President Obama released in light of the heartbreaking news of Representative John Lewis’ passing, he describes an inspiring conversation they had after their last public appearance together:

“It’s fitting that the last time John and I shared a public forum was at a virtual town hall with a gathering of young activists who were helping to lead this summer’s demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Afterwards, I spoke to him privately, and he could not have been prouder of their efforts—of a new generation standing up for freedom and equality, a new generation intent on voting and protecting the right to vote, a new generation running for political office. I told him that all those young people—of every race, from every background and gender and sexual orientation—they were his children. They had learned from his example, even if they didn’t know it. They had understood through him what American citizenship requires, even if they had heard of his courage only through history books.” 

Their conversation happened just six weeks ago, following a town hall hosted by the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance that focused on the mental toll racism takes on people of color. Rep. Lewis and President Obama, along with founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson, writer and survivor of police brutality Leon Ford, Jr., youth leader LeQuan Muhammad, and activist and author Darnell Moore, highlighted the importance of mental health and wellness for young leaders pushing for change. 

In a powerful moment, Rep. Lewis describes the courage he found in his faith and how this act of self-care allowed him to summon the strength he needed to keep fighting. It’s a testament to how he lived his life—and the example he set for future generations.

work is to inspire the next generation of leaders so that they can create a better world. Rep. John Lewis embodied that mission throughout his eighty years, and though we mourn his loss, we are lifted by his legacy—empowering young people to take up the baton of justice for years to come.

Rest in power. 

From the Obama Foundation. Read more here.

ISSUE: STOP CONSTRUCTION OF DEADLY & ILLEGAL DAMS IN THE BALKANS

River Neretva, Bosnia and Herzegovina ©Dinno Kasalo

While Europe is in lockdown over the Corona virus, investors are increasingly taking advantage of the unusual situation to build illegal dams in the Balkans. South of the capital Sarajevo in Bosnia, the construction of five dams has now begun or is being pushed to begin—in three cases without any permits. Local citizens are protesting the construction of these dams which will destroy their rivers, extinguish aquatic species, and forever change the surrounding land and ecosystems. A key driver behind the widespread river ecocide in the Balkans is the EU/European Commission-backed hydropower subsidies. Local communities need the assistance of global pressure to end these subsidies and stop these deadly dams.

What is at stake now, according to scientists, is 11,000 kilometers of rivers in pristine or near pristine state. These are some of the last unspoiled natural rivers remaining in all of Europe.

https://www.patagonia.com/stories/save-blue-heart-europe-balkan-rivers-story/story-28991.html

Please help us save these last wild rivers in Europe. Between Slovenia and Greece about 3,000 new hydropower projects are planned (436 in Bosnia alone!), more than 1,000 of them inside protected areas such as national parks or nature reserves. If these are built, close to 50 fish species will become extinct or pushed close to extinction, or about 10% of all European freshwater fish species (according to the Eco-Masterplan for Balkan rivers).  The scientific research[1] provides ample evidence that Balkan rivers are the most important hotspot for threatened freshwater biodiversity in Europe.

The main reason so many dams are now being built in this relatively pristine region is that hydro-developers are using what was intended as a positive renewable energy policy, Feed-in Tarrifs (FITS), to very negative ends.

Under FIT policies, investors receive government subsidies (financed through the electricity bills of consumers) for the electricity produced from the hydropower plants connected to each dam. Under this policy, the investor receives up to 3 times the amount of the actual market price of selling the electricity! This money machine together with corruption and nepotism are the key drivers behind the dam boom. The subsidies essentially pay developers for damming and destroying precious rivers. All dam construction should be stopped until new policies can be put in place that will protect these rivers and their ecosystems.

TAKE ACTION:

Send a message to the President, Vice President, key Commissioners of the European Commission, and Director of the Energy Community (see below for their emails). Urge them to immediately:

• End subsidies to hydropower projects
• Take action with national leaders of the Western Balkan countries to initiate a moratorium on new hydropower plants in the region to ensure that the most vivid rivers of Europe will not be destroyed.

SEND A MESSAGE TO THE FOLLOWING EUROPEAN AUTHORITIES:

Mrs. von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, [email protected]

Frans Timmermans, Vice President of the European Commission, [email protected]

Olivér Várhelyi, DGNEAR Commissioner, [email protected]

Virginijus Sinkevičius, DG ENVI Commissioner, [email protected]

Janez Kopac, Director of the Energy Community, [email protected]

Additional resources and links:

The main driver of the destructive small hydropower boom in the Balkans is the availability of public financial support in the form of feed-in tariffs. In 2018, 70% of EU renewable energy financial support in the Western Balkans was invested in highly destructive small hydropower, while the huge PV potential was largely ignored. In 2018, only 3.6% of electricity in the Western Balkans was generated by hydropower plants under 10 MW, at a massive environmental cost.  What this means is that the Balkan rivers are being destroyed for very little electricity as a result of EU subsidies on hydropower.  Instead of river-destroying excess hydropower, the region should focus on energy efficiency and building of truly clean renewable energy like solar and wind.

• Recent press release from the Blue Heart of Europe coalition: https://balkanrivers.net/en/news/increasing-destruction-na5%20rijeka%20ture-times-pandemic
• https://www.balkanrivers.net/en/campaign

• Blue Heart Eco-Masterplan scientifically assessing more than 80,000 kilometers of Balkan rivers and streams
• https://bankwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/who-pays-who-profits.pdf

EarthAction.org     [email protected]

[1] https://balkanrivers.net/sites/default/files/Fish_Study_web.pdf