Namibian smelter expansion risks deepening environmental and health problems
Blog entry | 17 July, 2017As it nears two years of a Bankwatch visit to the copper smelter in Namibia and the uncovering of an unsafe arsenic disposal site, a planned expansion has revealed so far undisclosed environmental information.
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Southern Gas Corridor update: Russian involvement increasingly evident
Blog entry | 17 July, 2017While new public finance for the Southern Gas Corridor is lining up, the European Commission’s narrative that the pipeline would relieve Europe’s dependence on Russian gas continues to crumble.
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Nuclear safety in Europe: decision-making behind closed doors?
Blog entry | 4 July, 2017European citizens don’t want to be left out of decision-making over nuclear power. But a recent meeting of the Espoo Convention reveals how concerns over reactor life-time extensions are being sidelined.
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EU urged to honour Paris Agreement, withdraw support for gas mega-pipeline
Press release | 3 July, 2017In an open letter released today, climate scientists, indigenous leaders, environmental and social justice groups, actors and artists call on the European Union to immediately withdraw its support for a gas mega-pipeline that would ‘destroy Europe’s climate targets’.
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Nuclear accountability curbed by EU politics and industry interests
Blog entry | 3 July, 2017A meeting of the parties to the UN convention on environmental impact assessment in a transboundary context (Espoo) helped to showcase the influence that politics and the nuclear industry lobby have over decisions that have potentially severe impacts on European citizens’ health and the environment.
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Guest post: A win for citizen activism after UNESCO asks Macedonia to stop all construction projects on Lake Ohrid
Blog entry | 27 June, 2017After a field visit to the Lake Ohrid in Macedonia, the UNESCO requested the Macedonian government to halt construction projects in the area, one of which is supported by the European Bank For Reconstruction and Development.
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Women and hydropower: exacerbating vulnerability without resettlement
Blog entry | 19 June, 2017The 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.
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Powerline to nowhere: Georgian villages take stand against badly routed transmission lines
Blog entry | 13 June, 2017Mountain villages in the country’s northeast protest for changes to the routing of high voltage lines in a series of local protests.
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From Enver Hoxha to the EBRD (and back) – hydropower in Albania
Blog entry | 7 June, 2017The EBRD and Societe Generale are now sponsoring a mass-scale construction project across Albania. Over 300 hydropower plants in various stages of development are posing real threats to the mountainous country’s nature and people. They should avoid repeating Ever Hoxha’s concrete folly.
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Locals oppose dam that is set to endanger critical fish habitat in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Blog entry | 30 May, 2017We 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
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