Blogs

Almost all the countries in the Balkan region are planning to build new coal power plants, but there has been virtually no mention of the need for them to comply with new pollution standards.

Mountain villages in the country’s northeast protest for changes to the routing of high voltage lines in a series of local protests.

Unsuccessful in making a coal power plant reduce abhorrent pollution levels, the village of Golemo Selo, Bulgaria is trying to “move” to a new municipality, hoping to have more say in matters concerning its citizens’ health and livelihoods.

Levels of particulate matter (fine dust) in Rosia de Jiu, Romania were up to 20 times above the limit suggested by the World Health Organisation, show the results of our independent monitoring.

Enver Hoxha, the former communist dictator in Albania, ruled in such a bizarre way that he found himself ostracised by other communist rulers. Among others he flooded the country of 3 million people with 750 000 concrete bunkers. Those bunkers were built ignoring people, nature but also military rules - as some of them were facing each other.

The European Union’s and China’s joint commitment to climate action is tarnished by Chinese support for and the EU’s neglect of coal projects in the Balkans, as a new briefing shows. But it is still not too late to change course.

We are passing through the canyon of the river Vrbas, in north-west Bosnia-Herzegovina. I am looking through a car window, mouth wide open in awe. While I look up to the rocky, edgy peaks hundreds of meters above and down to the heavenly blue river, I am wondering why anyone would want to dam this river, flood the canyon and destroy its beauty.

Then again, rather than seeing beauty, hydropower companies see wasted water resources, or in the words of a Bosnian official “euros flowing away in vain.”

Green Home, a Montenegrin environmental non-governmental organisation, on Friday submitted a complaint to the Administrative Court of Montenegro requesting the cancellation of the environmental approval for the controversial Pljevlja II coal power plant the government seeks to build.

The Court of Appeal of the Cherkasy region in central Ukraine sided with community activist Nina Martynovska from the Ratseve village who was brutally beaten because of her opposition to the construction of poultry farm facilities by Peremoha Nova, a subsidiary of Ukrainian agribusiness giant MHP.

The court decision from April 12 thus confirmed an earlier ruling by the Chyhyryn district court that the incident was related to “a conflict [...] over the chicken farm” between the victim and the attacker.

At a meeting with the directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Bankwatch campaigners read a statement from Italian communities opposing the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, the last leg of the Southern Gas Corridor, a 3500km pipeline intended to bring gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.

We reproduce the powerful statement here.