local impacts

The disproportionate impacts that the Nenskra hydropower project in Georgia will have on women are not being assessed by the project company, in spite of its financiers’ standards.

Brussels may fine Bulgaria for its excessive air pollution. But living in Pernik, the most polluted town in Europe, remains a hazard to peoples’ health as the results of Bankwatch’s independent dust monitoring show.

Ukraine's agriculture was the only sector in the country to grow in 2014. International investors like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development are happy to point this out - and the role they are playing in financing these investments.

But an investigation published today into one of the main beneficiaries of loans from the EBRD and other multilateral development banks shows that cheap Ukrainian food products are coming at the expense of severe impacts on local communities.

After the epic battle against the Rosia Montana gold mine in Romania ended in success, many people still don't know that Romania and other countries in the region such as Bulgaria are still threatened by several gold mining proposals, some of which would involve the use of cyanide leaching.

Protests against a new Kronospan formaldehyde plant in the Romanian town of Sebes continue into their third week. Their history dates more than ten years back when the company came to modernise the local plant with financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The ongoing demands for breathable air cast a shadow over the EBRD’s promises of sustainable development and transition.

Georgian Urban Energy (GUE), the company in charge of constructing the Paravani hydropower plant (HPP), has been keeping secret a study on the potential flooding risks associated with the facility, despite requests and promises from the EBRD that such an analysis would be made public.

The SOCAR Refinery project and its ‘secret’ coal power plant show the magnitude of the problems that the mixture of business interests, coal and neglect of local health concerns may cause in Turkey.

Last weekend, the Georgian Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources again left no doubt about where its main interests lie: enforcing the massive exploitation of Georgia’s hydropower potential despite and against people’s concerns and if necessary by use of force.