Green Week 2002,Brussels
EU Enlargement-related events organised by WWF – Thursday and Friday, April 18-19
Summary of Proceedings
Threats and Opportunities for Nature in the New Europe
Thursday, April 18 - 9:30-13:00, Bourchette
The two back-to-back sessions focused on existing and potential threats to natural areas in Central and Eastern Europe and suggestions on how to address them. Special attention was given to implications – both positive and negative -- of EU accession for nature as well as for ongoing efforts to protect the environment and achieve sustainable development in the region.
Session 1: Threats to Nature in the New Europe (9:30-11:00)
Moderator: Sandra Jen, Natura 2000 Policy Officer, WWF European Policy Office
The future Members States of the European Union have some of the most pristine landscape and near-natural river systems in Europe, flourishing wildlife and a great variety of natural habitats - many natural values that will enrich the natural wealth of the European Union.
Whilst national administrations are working to harmonise national environmental legislation with the EU acquis and to prepare the extension of Natura 2000 - the Europeanwide ecological network - to their territory, numerous projects pause significant threats to areas of European importance for nature conservation.
Accession to the EU also implies accelerating development pressures with, for example, the extension of the Trans-European Transport Network or the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy. Pre-accession funds such as PHARE, ISPA, SAPARD and support from international financial institutions - such as the European Investment Bank - have the potential to bring about the intensification of agriculture and give rise to environmentally damaging infrastructure projects. Such projects can - and generally do - have harmful negative impacts upon landscape and nature and hinder the establishment of Natura 2000 in the future member States.
The session began with the presentation of five case studies of areas expected to become Natura 2000 sites that are threatened by different forms of development, from dam building to highway construction. After a brief period of questions and answers, the session ended with a presentation by Zoltan Waliczky of the potential damage to Important Bird Areas that could be wrought by planned transportation projects throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
Five Threats to Nature
Kresna Gorge, Bulgaria: Struma motorway
Vesselina Kavrakova, WWF Danube Carpathian Program, Bulgaria
Controversy has been swirling around the planned construction of the Struma motorway through the Kresna Gorge for over a year. Despite an Environmental Impact Assessment and inquiries from the European Commission, the problem remains.
Morava-Dyje floodplain, Slovakia: Danube-Oder canal and development activity
Mira Cierna, Daphne Institute of Applied Ecology, Slovakia
A Ramsar site of exceptional value, the Morava-Dyje floodplain has received considerable investment from various EU and national funds for revitalization. Despite this and added protection from a tri-national memorandum signed last year, the area is now threatened by development projects that are connected with the planned Danube-Elbe-Oder canal, which would lead to the loss of thousands of hectares of valuable floodplains.
Drava river, Croatia and Hungary: Novo Virje Hydroelectric power plant
Helena Hecimovic, DravaLeague, Croatia
A hydroelectric power plant planned to be built on the Drava river in Croatia threatens to destroy not only valuable nature areas in Croatia but also a national park and potential Natura 2000 sites in nearby Hungary. The case provides a good example of how nature protection in the future enlarged EU cannot stop at the Union’s borders.
Buda Hills, Hungary: Urban development
Gyorgy Gado, WWF Hungary
Located within the Budapest agglomeration, the Buda hills feature unique Dolomite grasslands and a number of endemic species that have earned the area a European diploma. Despite being protected, the area is threatened by development including the construction of commercial shopping malls and housing developments, heavy traffic and inappropriate logging, in part due to lax regulation. The Buda hills provide a good example of the pressures faced by natural areas around dynamically growing urban areas in many of the Accession Countries.
Vistula river, Poland: Nieszawa dam
Jacek Engel, Freshwater Officer, WWF Poland
Planned construction of a dam on the Vistula at Nieszawa threatens the natural integrity of Poland’s “Queen of Rivers”, despite cheaper and less damaging alternatives. The main purpose for building the dam is to relieve pressure on the existing Wloclowak dam; according to an independent study commissioned by WWF, a more optimal solution, both in economic as well as environmental terms, would be to renovate the existing dam or, better yet, to remove the existing dam entirely.
Road to Destruction? Potential impact of the TINA Network on Important Bird Areas
Zoltan Waliczky, BirdLife International
Waliczky presented the results of a study that was conducted by BirdLife International into the impact that construction of transportation infrastructure in the CEE accession countries could have for Important Bird Areas. The result: planned transportation developments could affect 85 valuable bird areas, i.e. more than a fifth of the Important Bird Areas that are contained in the accession countries. Road developments affect 52 areas, while, rather surprisingly, development of waterways could affect 34. To avoid this damage, it is urgent that the environment is integrated into sectoral policies, and that Strategic Environmental Impact Assessments are made to assess the potential impact of the TINA network at both the country and corridor level, and revise the TINA network and individual projects accordingly.
The session ended with elaboration of some recommendations for avoiding such threats to nature, including more effective coordination between policies and programmes, thorough Strategic Environmental Impact assessments, as well as better provision of public access to information and decision making. The challenge is to guide new developments and shape future patterns of investment and land-use in a way which utilise natural capital without undermining or destroying it.Enlargement offers the European Union an opportunity to put its paper commitments to sustainable development into practice.
Contacts:
- Vesselina Kavrakova, Projects Officer, WWF Danube Carpathian Programme:
- Gyorgy Gado, Buda Hills Project Officer, WWF Hungary:
- Helena Hecimovic, Ecological Society of Koprivnica:
- Mira Cierna, Agriculture Policy Officer, Daphne Institute of Applied Ecology:
Jacek Engel, Freshwater Officer, WWF Poland:
- Zoltan Waliczky, EU Accession Coordinator, BirdLife International:
Session 2: Opportunities or Missed Opportunities? Enlargement and Rural Areas
(11:30-13:00)
Moderator: Paul Csagoly, Communications Officer, WWF Danube Carpathian Program
Achieving sustainable rural development will be crucial not only for making enlargement a success, but also for assuring that it does not come at the cost of the prodigious natural wealth that is contained particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. In rhetoric, the EU has clearly recognized this challenge. But does rhetoric fit actual practice? To what extent does progressive legislation like the Water Framework Directive or Natura 2000 and various funding programs like SAPARD, ISPA and Phare contribute to, or threaten, sustainable rural development in the accession countries?
Opening Remarks: Paul Csagoly, WWF Danube Carpathian Program
The Hungarian puszta in the World Heritage Site, HortobagyNational Park, is a haven for wildlife and birds and traditional, organic, small-scale agricultural activities. British birders have been know to become mesmerized by the park’s common tree sparrows – once common in England but now almost extinct, largely due to intensive agriculture. Does the same fate await sparrows, small-scale farmers and more endangered species such as black storks in Central and Eastern Europe via the accession process?
The Chairman introduced the five members of the panel. The Chairman explained that three panelists would first make brief presentations, followed by questions from the Chair to the remaining two panelists, after which a debate would be opened up between the panelists and the floor.
The Accession Process: Problems and Possibilities: Charlie Avis, WWF Danube Carpathian Programme
On paper at the highest levels, the key objectives via the accession process are sustainability, integration, participation, equality and democracy. Practice has proven different, however, with a disenchanted public and threats to biodiversity intensifying and multiplying. Why? The two main problems are poor coordination and poor connectivity – between policies, sectors, countries, ministries and NGOs. The problem is most acute between those people who care most about their surroundings – local people and communities – and those who are preparing broader programmes, policies, and processes at the highest levels – especially national governments and the EC. The ultimate goal is therefore to proactively integrate and better connect local initiatives on the ground with hgih level programmes and processes.
Sustainable rural development in Central and Eastern Europe: Rafal Serafin, Director, Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation
There are numerous local environmentally sustainable projects activities happening on the ground in the accession countries, often successful without support from higher governmental levels including national governments and the EC. Success is often the result of effective coordination and trust between local municipalities, workers (i.e. farmers) and NGOs using traditional practices that have been „modernized“ where possible, in balance with the local environment’s carrying capacity and in response to local needs. Local people care less about official messages such as sustainability‘ or ‚nature conservation‘ than they do about their communities, surroundings and their quality of life. To involve local people, this must be taken into account – a key objective of the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe foundations in Poland, the CzechRepublic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, which have spent the past ten years promoting local activities in the accession countries.
EU contribution through SAPARD to sustainable development in rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe: Alan Wilkinson, Head of SAPARD, DG Agriculture, Brussels
The SAPARD pre-accession programme and funding mechanism of the EC´s agricultural directorate has been quite successful in assisting accession countries in integrating the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and in promoting rural development. Unlike other pre-accession instruments, SAPARD allowed each beneficiary country to assume responsibility for their particular priorities. SAPARD’s 15 measures do promote sustainability, and a feature common to all SAPARD investment projects is that they need to respect the same environmental requirements as for projects carried out within the Community. SAPARD measures can be used by countries to support other EU programme measures, including the Water Frameowrk Directive. Finally, opportunities exist for improving SAPARD and this is open to NGOs.
Post-presentation debate and conclusions
The rest of the session was devoted to a debate among the panelists and the floor. Magda Stockiewicz of CEE Bankwatch/Friends of the Earth presented the results of her analyses of the negative impacts of EC transportation policies on the natural environment of accession countries. She agreed with Mr. Avis that there was a disconnect between local sustainability and EC rhetoric, and that opportunities to influence high level decisions were limited. Eric Myjer, Member of the European Parliament, presented his past experiences in trying to overturn negative EC decisions and policies through parliamentary level work, noting that the EC often prefers large-scale projects implemented with the cheapest costs, whereby environmental considerations often have low priority.
Mr. Wilkinson responded that it is “society’s choice” to democratically define what form rural development would take during accession in each country. He added that NGOs might possibly be romanticizing the life of small-scale farmers in the accession countries who might possibly be more interested in the options brought to them by westernization.
In the end, the Chairman posed a number of unresolved questions which possibly represent the key actions to be addressed in the future related to agricultural development in the accession countries. These included the need for analyses of: public opportunities to influence the accession process; the level of „connectedness“ between national accession country governments and local farmers; the true long-term intentions of accession country small-scale farmers; and the expected impacts of the CAP on accession country environments and species – even including common tree sparrows.
Contacts:
- Paul Csagoly, Communications Manager, WWF Danube Carpathian Programme:
- Charlie Avis, Policy Officer, WWF Danube Carpathian Programme:
- Rafal Serafin, Director, Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation:
- Allan Wilkinson, head of SAPARD unit, DG Enlargement:
- Eric Myjer,Member of the European Parliament:
Magda Stockiewicz, CEE Bankwatch/Friends of the Earth:
Enlargement Enriches the EU
Friday, April 19, 2002 - 9:30-13:00, Charlemagne S1
Moderator: Andreas Beckmann, EU Accession Coordinator, WWF International
The two back-to-back sessions first looked at the prodigious natural wealth that is contained in the accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe before investigating strategies for preserving this natural heritage, including implementation of the Natura 2000 nature conservation network as well as ways of marrying nature conservation with socioeconomic development.
Session 1: Enlargement Enriches the EU (9:30-11:00)
For many people in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe still conjures images of environmental death and destruction: the twisted stumps of North Bohemian forests, the industrial wastelands of south-western Poland, the poisoned fish of the Tisza river. The images of these individual “hotspots” in fact conceal a diversity of species and landscapes that far exceeds that in Western Europe. The bulk of Europe’s natural wealth in fact lies in the east, not the west. Just for example: the Carpathian mountains are home to over 5,000 wolves, compared to some 180 for Scandinavia.
Europe’s Yellowstones
Elisabeth Samec, of the WWF Danube Carpathian Programme and coordinator of the Carpathian Ecoregion Initiative (CEI), reported the results of a status report of the Carpathian Mountains that has been undertaken by WWF and the more than fify organisation and institutions that are participating in the Initiative. Stretching across seven countries from Austria to Romania, the Carpathians are the last bastion for large mammals and home to the most significant fragments of virgin forest that are left on the European continent. After mapping natural values as well as socioeconomic threats to the region and organizing together with the Romanian government a high-level Carpathian Summit, which resulted in pledges by statesmen from across the region to preserve the area’s significant natural values, CEI is now working to promote sustainable development and nature conservation in the region.
A safety net for nature
Natura 2000, the cornerstone of EU nature conservation policy, is certainly one of the key tools for preserving natural values in the Carpathians and the accession countries in general. Helena Carska of the Daphne Institute of Applied Ecology in Bratislava described the current status of preparations for implementing the network of nature conservation areas in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on experience from WWF and other colleagues from across the region, she reported that drafting of official lists of sites is moving forward at breakneck speed in most of the countries, pushed forward by the need to submit draft lists by the date of accession – a marked contrast to experience in existing Member States, where implementation of Natura 2000 has lagged considerably. Conditions and capacity for preparing lists and implementing the network vary considerably between individual countries. NGOs have been playing an important role in identification of sites, and will remain important for actual implementation, including public awareness raising and work with stakeholders. Across the region, there is a significant shortage of funding for Natura 2000 and an urgent need for positive communication of the nature conservation network to stakeholders and the general public.
In the ensuing discussion, participants from Latvia to Bulgaria fleshed out and added to some of the comments made by Helena regarding implementation of Natura 2000 in their countries.
Contacts:
- Andreas Beckmann, WWF EU Accession Coordinator:
- Elisabeth Samec, Coordinator for Carpathian Ecoregion Initiative:
- Helena Carska, Nature Conservation officer, Daphne Institute of Applied Ecology:
Session 2: Stitches in the Net (11:30-13:00)
The second session focused on strategies for turning the region’s natural capital into hard cash – something essential for ensuring nature conservation and effective implementation of Natura 2000, especially given the fact that most rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe are relatively poor and suffer from high unemployment.
Four case studies were presented of ongoing initiatives in the region that, in the words of one member of the audience, provided significant hope and inspiration. One of the common threads running through these initiatives is sustainable tourism, which presents opportunities not only for generating income for local people but also developing a sense of local and regional pride and identity.
Väinameri, Estonia:Preserving coasts through development
Toomas Kokovkin, project coordinator, Research Centre Arhipelaag
The area of Vainameri in Estonia is a valuable coastal area, with extensive coastal meadows, islets and lagoons, and an important migration route for birds, reproduction area for seals, and spawning area for fish. Kokovkin described the longer-term efforts of his organization, WWF Sweden, and the Swedish aid agency SIDA to preserve the cultural landscape of the area through promotion of sustainable rural development. Project tools include farming of semi-natural areas, including extensive grazing and production of „green“ beef from highland cattle; development of handicrafts using reeds, wool, and wood; and promotion of nature tourism. Kokovkin estimates that the initiatives are just about sustainable in an economic sense, thanks to developing niche markets for high-quality beef and produce as well as handicrafts.