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.
Belgrade incinerator plans raise burning questions
December 19, 2018 | Read more
The planned Belgrade waste incinerator in Serbia, being considered for financing by the EBRD, EIB and IFC, is incompatible with increasing waste prevention and recycling rates and endangers the already precarious livelihoods of the 12,000 people who currently live from waste-picking in the city. The recently published environmental and social impact assessment for the project fails to resolve either of these issues, as well as numerous others.
In the middle of last week, negotiators in this year’s UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, were scrambling to agree on guidelines for the Paris Agreement that would ensure global warming is capped at no more than 2 degrees. At the same time, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), one of the world’s key development banks, adopted a new energy lending strategy that ends its support for coal but keeps the door wide open for gas. Ioana Ciuta of CEE Bankwatch Network takes a closer look.
State of play with the energy transformation in Romania
December 13, 2018 | Read more
Europe’s commitment to the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development means that the EU must drive an energy transformation, but in Romania, inadequate financial support and a lack of political will still stand in the way of progress.
Challenges of communicating the energy transformation in Latvia [Video]
December 12, 2018 | Read more
Renewable energy has gotten a bad rap in Latvia. Since the construction of hydroelectric power stations during the Soviet era to the recent installment of the first wind parks and the country’s feed-in tarrif system, the ‘mandatory procurement scheme,’ renewables have been used for nefarious purposes like fuelling populism during election campaigns.
