A clash is raging between nature and finance. On the one hand, the EU is striving to improve the deteriorating state of nature across Europe, with initiatives like the Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and the European Green Deal. On the other, massive amounts of public money continue to flow to infrastructure projects with devastating impacts on the natural world. Our work where finance meets the natural world advocates for adequate protection and restoration projects to ensure a green future for all.
IN FOCUS
Rivers and communities
The countries of the Energy Community Treaty have diverse energy mixes, but hydropower has traditionally played a strong role in many of them. Albania is almost completely reliant on dams for its domestic electricity generation, followed by Georgia with an average of 80 per cent of electricity generated by hydropower and Montenegro with an average of 55 per cent.
EU funds and biodiversity
In May 2020, EU leaders committed to an ambitious Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, outlining the clear need to act on biodiversity loss and address the failing health of nature.
The historic amount of EU funds now available represents a golden opportunity to increase biodiversity spending and fully realise the objectives of the biodiversity strategy.
As well as addressing the biodiversity crisis, strategically supporting nature through EU funds is also one of the most effective ways to tackle climate change, while providing jobs and improved health at the same time.
Yet, with many of the previous strategy’s objectives left unachieved, the pressure now mounts for this decade. Never before has there been so much potential – and urgency – to use EU funds and investments to address the biodiversity crisis.
Related projects
Upper Horizons hydropower scheme, Bosnia and Herzegovina
A series of dams, diversion tunnels, hydropower plants and channels will completely change the natural hydrology of eastern Herzegovina and have unpredictable impacts on wetlands, rivers and underground karst.
Ulog and Upper Neretva hydropower plants, Bosnia and Herzegovina
A 35 MW hydropower plant is currently under construction on a pristine section of the Neretva river at Ulog. Seven more plants are also planned further upstream.
Skavica hydropower plant, Albania
Instead of increasing its energy security, Albania is pushing the construction of yet more hydropower. The Skavica project may flood several villages, displace thousands of people and bring the Balkan lynx to extinction
Latest news
New elections in Poland offer one last chance to solve the Oder River catastrophe
Blog entry | 1 December, 2023The Oder River, which forms the border between Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, faced a severe environmental disaster in 2022. More than one year later, the river is in peril again. The decisions taken by the previous government have so far only exacerbated the situation. Now, a new government offers one last opportunity to show environmental stewardship and reverse the catastrophe.
Read moreThe European Bank for Reconstruction and Development must do more to safeguard biodiversity in its new environmental policy
Blog entry | 4 October, 2023As the global biodiversity crisis grows ever more urgent, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) environmental policy and practice is proving insufficient to prevent harm to nature, let alone allow its restoration. The Bank’s review of its environmental and social policy in the coming months must provide a proportionate response to the scale of the problem.
Read moreWhy we’re taking legal action on renewables permitting
Blog entry | 22 September, 2023It might seem counterintuitive for organisations that promote a sustainable energy transition to challenge EU initiatives to speed up renewable energy deployment. But due to undemocratic decisions that undermine environmental safeguards and public participation, that’s what we’ve been compelled to do.
Read moreRelated publications
A Partnership of unequals – Electricity exports from the eastern neighbourhood and western Balkans
Study | 7 June, 2012 | Download PDFCooperation in the energy sector is one of the European Union’s key priorities in its relationships with neighbouring states. Although the promotion of energy efficiency, energy savings and the use of renewable energy sources should be the primary areas of cooperation along with “energy security”, the latter receives the lion’s share of attention and in several cases also a disproportionally large amount of financial support. This can have several negative environmental and social implications as this study shows.
Revealed: EBRD climate crimes rising
Bankwatch Mail | 17 May, 2012 |EBRD efforts to clean up its energy lending in central and eastern Europe are being undermined by extensive fossil fuel investments, with astonishing increases in the EBRD’s backing for coal and oil projects in 2011.
Ombla hydropower project under fire in the European Parliament
Bankwatch Mail | 14 May, 2012 |The 68 MW Ombla underground hydropower project, for which the EBRD approved a EUR 123.2 loan in 22 November 2011, is once again under fire, this time in the European Parliament. Both the project itself and its approval process have attracted widespread criticism from civil society and biodiversity experts as the project location forms part of a future Natura 2000 site. In 2008 the Croatian State Institute for Nature Protection declared the project “unacceptable for nature”.
