Time to Defend the Commons in Central and Eastern Europe

Guest post by Claudia Ciobanu.

Claudia is a freelance reporter covering Central and Eastern Europe. She writes regularly for Inter Press Service news agency.

For many, the idea that Poland under the leadership of Donald Tusk will be the host of the next round of UN global climate talks is a big bad joke.

Over the past year and more, Poland has been single-handedly blocking EU progress on emission reduction targets. In September, Tusk spoke publicly about how his country would continue to rely on (dirty) coal as a main source of energy; Poland, said the prime minister, would also pursue shale gas exploration and would invest in renewables just as much as is needed to meet EU requirements.

A big “clean coal” conference will be hosted by the Polish Ministry of Economy during the COP and Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), a main promoter of lignite mining in the country, will be an official partner of the climate conference.

All the while, Polish politicians continue to promise that the country can provide leadership for the progress of climate negotiations during the conference.

That this promise is empty, I take it as a given. We surely cannot hope that Poland would provide an inspirational push to worldwide climate negotiators gathered in Warsaw in November. We may still hope Poland will do limited harm.

In July, speaking during a press conference about the organisation of the COP, Polish Minister of Environment Marcin Korolec made an interesting statement that probably sums up the level of environmental concern in the Tusk government.

Outside the press conference venue, villagers from Zurawlow, who are opposing shale gas exploration by US giant Chevron, were protesting. So I asked the Minister what does he have to say to the people that do not want shale gas drilling in their backyards. Korolec responded, “Shale gas constitutes an enormous opportunity for Poland. The majority of environmental issues are extremely emotional, as we see with the people of Zurawlow, but we have to keep our route and realise our policy.”

„Emotional” – as a way of saying „irrational”, „easy to dismiss”, this is what the Minister had to say about the environmental concerns of his citizens.

This statement signals a huge disconnect between political leaders and citizens when it comes to the future of the country – and of the world, for that matter. And this is not unique to Poland. The fact that round after round of UN climate talks end up in failure despite hundreds of thousands of people outside conference venues and many others around the world calling for a deal indicates that the disconnect is the same in many places around the world.

After decades of international climate negotiations and with now almost full consensus around the idea that more than 2 degrees Celsius global warming would bring catastrophe upon us, our political leaders are still arguing about who should start taking measures first while scientists are warning that we hardly have any chance at the moment to stick to the 2 degrees.

In the meanwhile, pending a global deal on limiting emissions, political leaders are promoting techno-fixes advocated for by the business sector. For fear to oppose industry, global leaders push for ideas such as offsetting (which allows companies to keep poluting as long as they pay for some environmental protection elsewhere – of course, what exactly constitutes environmental protection in this case is in itself problematic); some of those techno-fixes are inefficient if not harmful.

A good deal at COP is hard to achieve, we know it. The Warsaw meeting is anyway expected to only set the ground for the 2015 conference in Paris, when there is still hope for some final more solid agreement on global emission cuts. Indeed, if you witness the discussions during any COP, it becomes clear how tough it is to reach a worldwide compromise involving countries with various types of priorities and in relation to an issue as overarching as climate change.

But stepping outside the negotiation venues is always refreshing: always, the thousands of people outside the conference halls, in alternative summits, and waiting at home in their own countries for the outcomes of COPs, have simple, obvious, clear answers.

You want to limit emissions? Cap them. You want to stop poluting? Leave the dirty sources of energy in the ground. You think you won’t have enough? Get used to less.

For a long time, those types of answers were coming only from environmentalists, or from far away places, such as Latin America, or indigenous communities around the world. But we are starting to see them increasingly in Central and Eastern Europe too.

In Poland, the people of Zurawlow do not want the profits promised if shale gas is found and exploited. They do not want to rush and get a stake in that future allegedly super-profitable deal. They would much rather keep up their lifestyles, continue to farm, continue to drink water from the local wells that is sure to be clean.

In Romania, 2013 brought one of the most impressive episodes of citizen mobilisation around an environmental issue in our region to date. People are rejecting the promise of profits made by the Canadian company wanting instead to keep their homes, fresh air, and mountains.

The Bulgarian post-socialist environmental movement – one of the more active ones in our region and one of the first to have caught on to the risks of shale gas – was born from the fight to defend pristine beaches on the Black Sea and later on forests and mountains from luxury tourism developments.

In the Czech Republic, people have been occupying Sumava National Park over years, tying themselves to trees and living in the forest in order to defend it from being cut for tourism and wood production.

Politicians, in all these countries, are trying to ignore these voices. But even if those particular environmental battles are lost, the people’s need to defend what is theirs stays and comes back stronger the more it is challenged.

The battle to defend the commons has reached our post-socialist region. I will not pretend it is massive. But over the past years we are starting to connect more to the global battle against the senseless exploitation of resources that should be common to serve the interests of rich corporation with dubious benefits to our societies.

It may not be massive, but after marching with 25,000 people in Bucharest against gold mining at Rosia Montana in Romania, I do believe the disconnect between the political class and citizens will not be tolerated much longer even in our more passive post-socialist societies. And that people will call the bluff of Donald Tusk and others like him during the COP and elsewhere.