Croatian coal plant must not be resurrected
February 13, 2019 | Read more
The Plomin 1 coal plant, on Croatia’s Istrian coast, is already 50 years old. In 2017 it closed due to a fire. Yet the Croatian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Energy looks set to allow Plomin 1’s owner, HEP, to bring it back from the dead without even an environmental impact assessment.
Macedonian hydropower complaint highlights EBRD’s enduring opacity
February 11, 2019 | Read more
After almost a year of struggling to get basic environmental information from the EBRD about the Krapska hydropower project, Bankwatch has submitted an official complaint [1] to the bank’s Secretary General. As we run the same administrative circles over and over again, another precious river valley has been irreversibly damaged.
Changing lives and doing no harm
February 8, 2019 | Read more
“We invest in changing lives” is the slogan of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, whose investments in 2018 reached EUR 9.5 billion through 395 projects. Whether the change is for better depends on the bank’s environmental and human rights safeguards.
The weight of gold
January 16, 2019 | Read more
The new gold mine in Krumovgrad boasts environmental performance and social responsibility, yet there are black spots along the path of the Bulgarian gold around the globe.
A New Year’s resolution for Novaci – clean air
January 15, 2019 | Read more
Macedonia made headlines in December when the United Nations ranked its capital city, Skopje, as the most polluted capital city in Europe. If the ranking included non-capitals, it would not miss Novaci – a small village in the country’s south that also gasps for breath.
New reports add details to investigation of Armenia gold mine
January 8, 2019 | Read more
If you’re looking for a revolution, sign up for notifications from your embassy. The messages pinging on smartphone screens that night in October began not long after stepping into the evening streets around the Yerevan Cascade, warning of impending demonstrations outside the Armenian parliament. To be sure, the flashing blue and red sirens and thousands of people flooding past were impossible to ignore as well, so the consulates’ SMSs came as little surprise and instead provided more than anything context to the oncoming commotion.
