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Western Balkans are massively expanding coal power – but the new plants may have to be closed again soon

This article first appeared on EnergyPost.

Utilities in Western Europe are closing down fossil fuel power plants on a massive scale. Enel announced in 2014 that 23 coal and gas power stations in Italy with a capacity of 13 GW are to be scrapped within five years. In Germany, Vattenfall sold its 8 GW of loss-making lignite-fired power plants to Czech company EPH in 2016. In 2014 E.ON announced it would close 13 GW of coal and gas capacity across Europe and both RWE and E.ON have had to undergo restructuring in recent years as a result of their gas and coal plants losing value. In the UK coal fired power is dying a slow death.

The main drivers for this coal phase-out have been an increase in renewable energy coupled with very low electricity prices in most parts of Europe, and to a smaller extent, having to pay for CO2 allowances under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Now the Western Balkans countries – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia – look to be in grave danger of repeating the same mistake. They are planning to build new power plants that may suffer the same fate.

Table with planned coal plants in the Balkans at less and more advanced stages.
A table from the briefing showing projects in advanced stage that have great political support (left-hand column) and those at a much earlier stage (right-hand column).

EU market rules also apply to the Western Balkans electricity sector via the Energy Community Treaty, which entered force in 2006. It aims to extend the EU energy market to neighbouring countries and to make sure they apply EU regulations on subsidies and at least some of its environmental standards. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has not yet been adopted by the Energy Community, but Accession Countries – and that includes most Western Balkans countries – need to apply it as soon as they enter the EU.

More expensive

However none of this seems to have entered the heads of decision-makers in the Western Balkans, who remain wedded to producing as much electricity as possible, irrespective of the economic feasibility or impacts on the environment and climate. All countries in the region except Albania are planning to construct new coal power plants using low grade brown coal also known as lignite.

The planners assume that coal will be cheap, but not only is coal polluting, it is also going to get much more expensive. Environmental standards are gradually improving, which means additional costs due to pollution control equipment. And once the Emissions Trading Scheme is applied, it also means significant additional operating costs in the form of emissions allowances.

In a briefing published on 29 March we’ve crunched the numbers for ten new lignite power plants across the Western Balkans – one already built and nine planned – to see how much CO2 prices might add to annual operating costs.

For Pljevlja II in Montenegro, one of the smallest plants planned in the region, even with a very low CO2 price of €5 per tonne, payments would amount to nearly €8 million every year. With a CO2 price at €35 per tonne – which could easily be reached by 2030 – annual payments would come to no less than €55.6 million.

For the largest planned plant, the 600 MW Ugljevik III in Republika Srpska, annual payments would range between nearly €21 million and €146 million per year, for the same range of CO2 prices.

Table showing carbon costs planned for the planned coal power plants at different prices for carbon emissions.
Carbon costs planned for the planned coal power plants at different prices for carbon emissions.

No information

Worryingly, these huge costs do not appear to have been properly accounted for when planning the new coal plants.

In most cases no information is available to the public on the feasibility of the projects, even though most of the companies involved are state-owned. In those few cases where we do have some information on feasibility (Pljevlja II in Montenegro, Kostolac B3 in Serbia, Gacko II in Bosnia and Herzegovina), CO2 prices have not been properly taken into account.

In the case of Kostolac B3 in Serbia, the feasibility study summary states that CO2 prices have not been included because it is assumed that the state will pay these. But this assumption is certainly not in line with EU or Energy Community state aid rules. What’s more, in the sensitivity analysis where a CO2 price is included, it becomes obvious that even a low CO2 price is enough to render the plant uneconomic.

These findings should worry the companies developing projects, but also the governments and the public. Failure to include CO2 prices in feasibility calculations dramatically increases the risks of building coal plants that will be too expensive to operate, like many of those in Italy and Germany, and in the case of state-owned companies, it will likely be public budgets that will end up footing the bill one way or another.

Way of thinking

Most of the new coal plants planned were initially conceived 10-15 years ago when the situation was quite different. These projects have failed to take account of the massive changes that have taken place in the electricity sector since then. The companies pushing these projects urgently need to revise their feasibility assessments to take into account CO2 payments and technology improvements such as the Best Available Techniques reference document for large combustion plants which is currently under revision. If they do so, it is highly unlikely that any of the plants will turn out to be feasible.

The region’s governments also need to change their way of thinking away from generating ever-greater amounts of electricity in centralised facilities, and instead concentrate on managing demand. Demand-side energy efficiency is the best way to avoid shocks from fluctuating prices of either carbon credits or imported fuels and provides direct benefits for the public such as warmer houses and a significant number of jobs.

Some new capacity is still needed though. With a dearth of wind and solar power in the region, the governments also need to set 2030 targets for renewables and to diversify away from over-reliance on hydropower and coal. Without this, the region looks set to find itself stuck with a fleet of new but un-useable coal plants – a monument to the utilities’ and governments’ failure to change with the times.

 

Image by Luis Alveart, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://flic.kr/p/r5p3Ji

River defenders gather forces in Georgia

This article first appeared in open Democracy.

Free-flowing rivers are often the unsung heroes of the natural world. They support immense biodiversity, as in Macedonia, where the Mala Reka nourishes the scenic Mavrovo National Park, the country’s largest. The park is home to fifty animal species, 129 species of birds, and over a thousand invertebrate species – many of which are strictly protected. Despite the park’s incredibly diverse and fragile ecosystem, its river has been threatened by the planned Boškov Most dam.

For years, Bankwatch and environmental groups in Macedonia campaigned against the 68-megawatt project, which would have been built inside Mavrovo. Local activists and international experts alike repeatedly warned that the project would be detrimental both to the park’s fragile ecosystems and the dwindling population of the critically endangered Balkan lynx.

Then, in January, the campaign met with success. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the only financier of the controversial hydropower dam, officially announced it had cancelled its EUR 65 million loan to the project. Ecologists and many others cheered the decision.

The example of Boškov Most and other equally inspiring examples of people power will be on display this week in Tbilisi, where an extraordinary meeting of river defenders from around the globe is being held. Activists from 40 countries battling harmful hydropower and promoting the multiple benefits of rivers are gathering in the Georgian capital to share experiences and discuss potential responses to this complex problem.

It’s no coincidence that the meeting is being held in the former Soviet republic, as the small country has big ambitions to be a major hydro player.

Stories of resistance

Mountainous Georgia is endowed with rich biodiversity and a plethora of wild rivers, upon which the government is looking to build at least 34 new dams in the country’s northwest to become an electricity exporter. One such project is the 280 megawatt Nenskra dam, which at 1 billion dollars is an attractive investment for the government and foreign firms but which is exacting a toll on the indigenous Svan communities and the primeval nature of the Upper Svaneti region. Having been sidelined from decision making over the project, local residents have mobilised to protest the Nenskra dam and other planned hydropower projects in the region, which they fear could strip them of their traditional livelihoods and ancestral lands.

Residents from Svaneti will be in Tbilisi to share their stories of resistance and hear messages of solidarity from others like those involved in the successful Boškov Most case. They will also be there to learn from activists fighting for their rivers all over the planet.

Activists are fighting for rivers because, despite wins like Boškov Most, rivers and freshwater are facing unprecedented global threats. Chief among these threats is a tsunami of dam(n)ing hydropower plants. According to a 2015 study, “at least 3,700 major dams, each with a capacity of more than 1 MW, are either planned or under construction, primarily in countries with emerging economies.” If all these plans materialise, the capacity of global hydropower would expand by 73 per cent.

Large hydropower has already had a devastating impact on freshwater species: Since 1970, freshwater species have lost 81% of their populations, due in large part to dams. In the most heavily-dammed basins, fish runs have already – in many cases – collapsed: California’s historic salmon runs, for instance, are nearly gone. Further hydropower expansion would decimating the world’s remaining freshwater fisheries, which feed up to 550 million people globally.

Now developers are targeting the Amazon, the Mekong, and the Congo basins, which together contain 18 percent of the world’s freshwater fish species. In the Balkans, where estimates about the number of planned hydroelectric facilities range from 944 to as many as 2700 hydroelectric facilities, some of Europe’s most pristine river ecosystems face irreversible damage.

The expansion would exact a human toll as well. Near these planned projects, the communities that reside there – many of whom are indigenous and maintain distinct cultural practices – face the threat of displacement. All too often, when local residents mobilise to protest, governments respond violently to cull dissent and keep the flow of international investments into their coffers.

A Global Witness study concludes that no less than 15 activists campaigning against harmful hydropower projects were killed in 2015, mainly in the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. In other cases, hydropower opponents, who often point to the absence of any meaningful public consultations with affected communities, are threatened, harassed or tortured. Berta Caceres, who had led a local campaign against the Agua Zarca Dam in Honduras and was assassinated a year ago, is but one example.

Advocates for expanding hydropower claim that dams can help mitigate climate change, offsetting the social and environmental price tag. Unfortunately, studies have revealed that dams are a false solution for meeting both the challenges of rising energy demand and the worsening of the climate crisis.

One recent study has found that dam reservoirs have a greater short-term contribution to climate change than earlier thought, specifically due to methane emissions. The researchers found that dams are responsible for more methane – a potent greenhouse gas – than lakes and rivers, and are comparable to emissions from rice plantations and biomass burning. If the global hydropower development continues unabated, this problem will get even worse – in no small part because much of the hydropower expansion will take place in tropical countries where vast amounts of methane-producing vegetation will be flooded.

Civil society plays a crucial role in helping to amplify the voices of local communities standing together against governments and hydropower multinationals to protect their rivers. In Congo, Burma and other places across the world, protests against destructive hydropower projects have already forced decision-makers to change course.

National governments and international bodies are beginning to recognize that protecting freshwater is a top concern. 22 March marked World Water Day, a UN-sponsored recognition of the substance of life, and two recent court rulings, in New Zealand and India, extended the protections afforded by human rights to rivers. These milestones suggest that the numerous benefits provided by rivers (economic, environmental, social and cultural) are finally being given their due.

But protecting rivers requires a concerted global effort. And that, perhaps, is a silver lining in the renewed onslaught of hydropower: Water activists from diverse global movements will be forming connections in Tbilisi this week, uniting to take on the key drivers of the hydropower boom and protect our rivers as a vital source of life.

For our rivers, for our lives – activists from across the globe meet in Tbilisi, Georgia

85 river and dam activists from 40 countries and all continents gather in Tbilisi, Georgia this week to share experiences about their efforts to protect the world’s rivers and join their struggles against destructive hydropower projects.

The meeting, organised by Bankwatch and International Rivers comes at a time when dams are back in fashion, being considered as a clean and green source of energy, even though dam reservoirs are increasingly recognised as major greenhouse gas emitters.

In the 1990s investors including the World Bank had withdrawn from large hydropower installations over environmental and social concerns. Yet despite their resurrected enthusiasm, dams continue to be opposed (with some success!) by communities across the world for their destructive impacts on local ecosystems and livelihoods.

In Georgia, where the meeting takes place, the government and investors are fixated on tapping unused hydropower resources in remote and fragile mountain areas. In Upper Svaneti in the country’s north-west, 35 projects are planned in an area roughly the size of Mallorca in the Enguri river basin. Locals look back at decades of opposition to dam projects in the area and have so far successfully blocked the destruction of their homes and livelihoods.

Photo story

A panorama view with meadows, forest and mountains in the distance.The community of Chuberi will lose part of its land should the Nenskra dam be built.

Read the photo story

Further east, some of the most important river systems in Central Asia are under threat with the Lake Baikal basin and the Amur River basin. In 2016, protests led to the freeze of a USD 1 billion loan by the China Export-Import Bank for the Egiin Gol hydropower project, one of several potential projects in the Lake Baikal basin. Not too far away, plans for several large dam projects in the Amur River basin – the largest transboundary free-flowing river of North Eurasia and China – are currently frozen following concerted efforts from opponents.

Rivers don’t know borders

The cross-border dimension of riverflows is becoming especially pronounced in the Middle East, where among others the Ilisu Dam in southeast Turkey may threaten the environmental, cultural and economic situation of downstream communities in Iraq as well as Iraq’s Marshlands that were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Another case, Iran’s Daryan Dam, set to be completed by 2018 is feared to have a destructive impact on the water flows to Iraqi Kurdistan.

River campaigners in the region acknowledge this transboundary importance. The Tigris and Iraqi Marshes Campaign for instance insists that water could be a force for peace, igniting cooperation between all countries of the Tigris-Euphrates basin. EcoPeace Middle East, another group represented at this week’s river gathering, looks beyond nationalities by working with communities from all faiths to stop the degradation of Jordan River and rehabilitate it as an important intercultural, traditional and life-supporting water source. (See for instance their guide for tourist guides.)

Small is not always beautiful

But also plans for small hydropower installations must be treated with care, as the situation in the Western Balkans illustrates. A study by Austrian NGOs Riverwatch & Euronatur showed that 817 or 49% of all projected hydropower plants in the wider Balkan region, most of them small, fall in protected areas. Weighing their biodiversity footprint against their often minimal carbon savings, makes the more than thousand projects planned in the Balkans seem rather irresponsible.

Photo story

An image of a pristine river taken just above the water surface.Small hydro projects threaten the blue heart of Europe in the Balkans.

Read the photo story

The range of experience represented at the meeting will be rounded up by campaigners from the Americas, Africa, and South-East Asia, who will have stories to share from the Magdalena river campaign in Colombia and the Inga 3 dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo among others.

For impressions from the meeting and more from participating organisations, follow the hashtag #RiverGathering on Twitter.

Italian communities block pipeline works to save ancient olive trees

An ancient olive grove in southern Italy is currently on the frontlines of grassroots resistance to the Southern Gas Corridor project, the EU’s flagship energy project.

Earlier this week, members of the No TAP Committee, a local civil society group, and residents from the town of Melendugno mobilised to protest against what appears like the beginning of the works on the Italian section of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the westernmost point of this gigantic energy infrastructure. The protesters have been met with fierce police response, and this development is an unprecedented escalation of a years long stand-off around the landfall site of the pipeline.

In the early hours of Monday (March 20), TAP excavators moved in, in a bid to uproot the olive trees and make room for the pipeline construction site. The trees are planned to be moved to a temporary storage facility and re-planted at a later stage, but local residents have objected to this solution, fearing wider damage to the environment.

The bulldozers first cut four trees infected with Xylella fastidiosa bacteria, but before they could continue with the rest local residents started gathering at the site. By noon, around seven hours after the beginning of the works, over a hundred people, including families with children, were present at the site, alongside a similar number of police.

The improvised sit-in protest had managed to halt the excavators and shortly later the mayors of Melendugno and another neighbouring town, together with two members of parliament from the Five Star Movement, approached the police and the prefect, the state’s representative in the province, to suspend the works.

The works at the olive grove are “illegal,” Michele Emiliano, Governor of the Apulia Region, was quoted by Italian news agency ANSA as saying, but “the regional government does not have instruments to stop a project that the government has told police to protect, an operation considered [by the national government] absolutely strategic.”

Meanwhile, more people kept arriving to the site, and a public assembly held at Melendugno’s town square on Monday evening saw nearly a thousand people attending.

The next morning, four mayors, dressed in their ceremonial sashes, arrived at the site together with two members of parliament and 200 people, most of them residents of the nearby communities.

Trying to block the bulldozers, they were met with harsh police response that resulted in the injury of several people, including an elderly woman from Melendugno. The events have received considerable coverage in Italian media.

Olive trees on the contested area where the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline is supposed to be built.
Olive trees on the contested area where the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline is supposed to be built. (Image via Comitato No Tap)

Agreeing to look into issues with the permit authorising the works, the prefect had made a formal request to TAP’s contractor to suspend the works for three days.

Yet protesters, determined to prevent the works from moving ahead, arrived at the site at 5.00am yesterday and today. Public assemblies were also held every afternoon.

The mayor of Melendugno has called for non-violent actions and respect of the law. He also stressed that people have the right to defend their land, and that if the company and the government breach the law by proceeding with the works without permits, residents will find ways to respond.

The EU budget: Unlocking a new vision for Europe

This article first appeared on Euractiv.com.

The first glimpses provided by the European Commission on 1 March of a New Vision for Europe were not only defeatist but could not have felt more alienating for the citizens of Europe.

The release of the white paper from Commission President Juncker was supposed to be the first political moment to stir a new flame, a moment for grand vision and to plant the first seeds for how to reconnect Europe with its citizens.

Instead, the five scenarios – of which most had titles like ‘do nothing new,’ ‘do less,’ or ‘only the free market’ – spoke predominantly of the consequences of different structural arrangements, the dominance of market forces, and varying degrees of federalism for the European Project.

It mentioned scarcely anything about citizens and nothing at all about the environment. In sum, the New Vision failed to offer any solutions to the root causes of the disintegration forces chiselling away at the Union, or address the primary concerns of Europe’s citizens.

Fortunately the process for developing the New Vision is not over, and what few people have noticed is that a magic key remains untouched in this debate. Should we choose to use it, a key to unlock a more inspiring and politically winnable New Vision for a strong Europe may well be the next European budget.

The proposal for the upcoming seven-year ‘Multiannual Financial Framework’, or the EU budget, will be developed this year, and could give the much needed form and substance to a more forward looking vision. It is not too late.

But in order to see how to use the Budget as key to galvanise the New Vision into something meaningful that legitimately reconnects with Europe’s people, President Juncker will need something else: imagination.

While the EU Budget is only a fraction of the size of combined member state budgets, its real and symbolic role make it one of the key policies defining the European project. The reality is that many Europeans have little idea where the money goes, apart from being familiar with one or two star programmes like Erasmus for university students.

It is precisely by proposing an innovative, restructured budget, that the Commission can find a politically legitimate path and give form and substance to the beginnings of a truly forward looking vision for Europe.

The next EU budget must be for the people. Imagine a Europe that looks after low-income households by providing grants or zero interest rate loans for energy savings investments. And an EU budget that reduces inequality, and addresses the 50 million Europeans living in energy poverty – and others the ‘growth and competitiveness’ story left behind.

Imagine a Europe where one stop shops exist providing households and communities with easy access to EU supported funding programmes for things like community power.

Imagine an EU that no longer allows finance to be misused to support fossil fuel infrastructure that damages people’s health, jeopardises the EU’s long term energy policy goals, and forces potentially catastrophic climate change, but instead is directed to the decentralised infrastructure needed to catalyse the clean energy transformation.

A budget that gives citizens a greater sense of ownership in the European Project, by establishing meaningful participation in spending for environmentally and socially sustainable development. Then imagine that EU labelling requirements were actually enforced (too often they are not) so that every project and every one of these households benefiting from EU funds displayed the EU flag.

Finally imagine that Europe sets a fundamentally new orientation for society by agreeing more enlightened economic indicators to measure progress. A commitment to measuring and pursuing progress at European level based on well-being, and socially and environmentally sustainable prosperity, instead of the soulless and distorting dominance given to GDP per capita, has never been more needed.

At this point, some will caution that Brexit means Europe is likely to be faced with a smaller budget, and that there are many who would feel that the EU was overstepping its role, risking national governments brandishing that old sword of State sovereignty if the above reforms were proposed in an ambitious way.

Part of the answer to this may be increasing the amount of the EU’s ‘own resources’ within the Budget – the ability of the EU to raise and direct revenue at the European level, which could come in a number of forms, including green taxation to steer investment in the right direction.

Instead, the current budget is overly reliant on Member State contributions from gross national income. The share of truly genuine ‘own resources,’ funding streams under the EU’s direct control, decreased from over 65% in 1976 to merely 12.9% in 2016, and the connection with increasing questioning of the added value of the EU is no coincidence.

If combined with reforms to the transparency and democratic accountability of the spending of the EU budget, increasing Own Resources could create more direct links between citizens and Europe.

All of these ideas represent the sort of deep re-think that could allow the new EU to use the next budget to demonstrate a more visible added-value in ways that have the potential to renew hope in the future, yield political wins on the national front, and potentially help circumvent what is always a difficult fight over the carving of the seven year EU pie.

But I may have been wrong about one of these points – to know how to use the key, it is not only imagination that is needed, but courage.

Hatching discontent in Ukraine

This article first appeared on openDemocracy. (Image: Cherkasy oblast, by Niels Ackerman, Lundi13/NECU, 2016.)

The trip south from Kyiv to the villages of Cherkasy oblast takes several hours by bus over often bumpy roads, but I don’t mind — the idyllic countryside and expansive views of chernozem, the black soil that Ukraine is famous for, provides some respite from the concrete and hustle of the capital. Indeed, the country’s 30 million hectares of fertile and high-yielding soil is the reason why Ukraine is known as “the breadbasket of Europe”, and right now agriculture is booming.

The Maidan protests of 2014 ushered in an era of government reforms that have been a boon to agriculture, marked by a free trade agreement with the EU and a loan of $17 billion from the International Monetary Fund to support further reforms. The agricultural sector’s resilience is evidenced by the fact that, while most of the economy reeled after the Russian invasion of the Donbas region, this was the only sector to record growth in 2014. The World Bank has suggested that Ukraine offers a “big chance” to push for further deregulation and open up the country’s land resources to the agribusiness industry.

At present, a dozen or so large agribusiness holdings own a fifth of the country’s most fertile land. While a moratorium on land sales is in place to prevent further consolidation of agricultural ownership, pressure from corporations and international investors is likely to mean that the ban will be lifted.

This is why I travel so frequently to Cherkasy. People here have long made a living as smallholding farmers, but the intensification of large-scale agribusiness is threatening their very way of life.

Help from abroad

One threat to Cherkasy oblast is the industrial poultry farms of Yuriy Kosiuk, the billionaire chief executive of Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP). MHP, the country’s largest agricultural conglomerate, enjoys more than a 50% share of Ukraine’s domestic market for poultry, and is the leading exporter of Ukrainian poultry products.

MHP has received more than half a billion euros worth of development investments for its expansion from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the European Investment Bank. This means that the company must adhere to the international standards established in within those respective bank policies. But instead the poultry producers association, together with other associations of agricultural producers, successfully lobbied president Petro Poroshenko to veto the new law on Environmental Impact Assessment, which had to be adopted by Ukraine in 2016 as part of conditions to the Association Agreement with the EU.

The company enjoys generous state subsidies and conditions, too. MHP has been among the VAT refund big beneficiaries until 2017, though due to conditions imposed by the IMF, the scheme switched to direct state subsidies. MHP will qualify for around one billion UAH (around $38m) out of four billion UAH for all agricultural producers. These conditions and privileges contradict Ukraine’s and the Cherkasy region’s agriculture and rural policies and development plans — where the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises is a claimed priority.

The support from international financiers and the state budget enables MHP’s aggressive plans for expansion throughout Ukraine. The plans for new poultry production facilities in Cherkasy oblast bring me here to support locals — they are fighting for their rights to a safe and clean environment, and a lifestyle based on small household farming. People have appealed to the company, to local and national authorities, to the President Poroshenko, but instead of dialogue and consultations they were faced with neglect, intimidation and retaliation.

MHP and Chyhyryn

The most recent conflict between MHP and residents of Cherkasy oblast came in February 2017 when 70 representatives from the historic town of Chyhyryn made the trip to Kyiv in order to protest against the planned expansion of poultry facilities in their town.  One of the protestors was Nina Martynovska, a deputy village council in Chyhyryn rayon, who joined because she believes that their concerns are falling on deaf ears: “We’ve complained to decision-makers at all levels of the government, including the president of Ukraine, so many times that we’ve lost count.”

The relationship between MHP’s subsidiary Peremoha Nova and the community in Chyhyryn, however, has not always been so confrontational. When the company first arrived in Chyhyryn in 2015, local attitudes towards MHP were neutral. The project MHP proposed for Chyhyryn focused on expanding its parent poultry flock facilities, including brigades for 100,000 adult chickens, three brigades for 110,000 young repair chickens, and one brigade for roosters. The project would bring about one million chickens in total to the area.

A green field and a factory in the mid-distance.
Credit: Niels Ackerman, Lundi13/NECU, 2016.

But due, in part, to the way in which the project was first communicated to the community, Chyhyryn residents grew weary of MHP. The company initially received tacit co-operation from the village council chairwoman to negotiate individually with landowners without community level consultations. The company secured lease contracts for a period of 49 years — essentially to circumvent the federal moratorium on any further land sales — to receive the land necessary for its expansion. The lease period and the payments made up front to the landowners essentially amounted to selling local lands to MHP, thus dividing the community between people who cashed in through the settlements and people in favour of remaining in control of their livelihoods.

The public meetings and discussions about the expansion that MHP was obliged to organised were plagued with controversy. Attempts to prevent community members from freely participating and the physical attacks on others who tried to enter consultations happened in several locations.

When the company released a preliminary environmental assessment for consultation in late 2016, there was substantiated feedback from the community not to continue with the project. For its part, MHP seemed to have little interest in what residents had to say — it didn’t bother to collect the feedback left at the administration offices for more than a month afterwards.

The failure of MHP to engage communities in meaningful consultations has been a concern to its international financiers. In May 2016, the EBRD published a monitoring assessment summary report that concluded that “additional effort needs to be made with regards to appropriate information disclosure, transparency of information and also ensuring grievances are responded to and managed appropriately, including any grievances which are not formally submitted using the company’s Grievance Form”. At that time, the bank made recommendations for improvement of MHP’s performance with regards to transparent and meaningful stakeholder engagement and consultation. A year later, real progress is hard to detect, so this time around the IFC has hired consultants to help the company deal with stakeholder engagement.

In spite of the lack of feedback on the environmental assessment, the MHP expansion plans pose a number of problems for the residents of Chyhyryn. A sanitary protection zone has not been established in accordance with Ukrainian law, meaning that people could still be located within areas exposed to excessive levels of pollution from poultry facilities. Nor does the assessment make clear the potential impacts on potable water in Chyhyryn. The amounts of wastewater that will need purification and treatment is another area which the assessment fails to cover. In addition, there is still a lack of clarity about how emissions from the brigades will be attended to, so air pollution should cause concern for locals.

As of today, local farmers rented the lands on which MHP (Peremoha Nova) relies on. There is a threat that the arrival of a big player with long-term contracts of 49 years for land leases will have a negative impact on competition between businesses and will lead to economic displacement of small farmers from these lands.

A cautionary tale

While the future of MHP’s expansion in Chyhyryn remains in limbo, another community in Cherkasy oblast provides a cautionary tale. Before MHP pursued its plans in Chyhyryn, the company had tried for several years to expand its operations in the village of Moshny, 100km northwest of Chyhyryn. But residents there put up a fierce resistance and are now in frequent contact with those in Chyhyryn to support their struggles.

In November 2014, the managing director of Peremoga Nova, a subsidiary of MHP, informed the Moshny village council that it planned to build 144 poultry rearing houses at the edge of the village.

What happened next in Moshny has echoes with the situation in Chyhyryn. While the managing director of MHP assured villagers that the expansion project would not proceed without broad community support, the company began making secret deals with residents to lease their lands so that construction could move ahead. Ultimately, this approach was unsuccessful and over the next few months, instances of harassment, threats and pressures to lease lands continued. Concerns about the environmental impacts also share a number of similarities to the Chyhyryn project, including issues related to the protection of drinking water and the assurance of a sanitary zone around the facilities.

A woman standing in a garden in the middle of rich greenery. her arms are crossed, her face shows a little smile.
Kateryna Oprieenko. Find out more about how Kateryna is countering the alliance between investment banks and agricultural businesses here. (Credit: Niels Ackerman, Lundi13/NECU, 2016.)

One of the leading figures of resistance in Moshny is Kateryna Onopriienko, who has been a frequent traveller to Chyhyryn and supporter of their movement. She has been a frequent target of harassment and intimidation. As a former member of the local rayon council, Onopriienko suffered attacks on her integrity — for instance, when leaflets were distributed designed to discredit her in the eyes of the community.

Stronger together

If there is a silver lining in MHP’s push into Cherkasy, it is the possibility for interaction between communities like Chyhyryh and Moshny and the promise it holds for strengthening their struggles through solidarity. To be an activist like Kateryna Onopriienko, you don’t just need to be brave. You need to understand the specific dynamics of rural living and the pressures you’re likely to face, including physical assaults and beatings. What this means is that people involved in the resistance to MHP provide support in a variety of ways to their counterparts.

Activists in Chyhyryn and Moshny regularly communicate by phone, attend joint protest rallies at state administration buildings or local councils and share knowledge about the most effective methods of appealing their case to decision-makers and MHP officials alike. Through continued support via trainings and campaign tactics, the villagers have been empowered to continue their fight against Ukraine’s largest agricultural conglomerate.

But people in Cherkasy aren’t only engaged in resistance, they are also looking for alternatives. Tourism can play a key role in the the development of these rural areas, so that people learn to value their lands as an asset to build on in the long term. This would also help defeat some of the short-termism offered by the mirage of employment at the industrial poultry facilities (where the process automatisation reaches 85%) or the quick cashout of a one-time payment for land.

I will continue to visit and support the communities in Cherkasy. In the future, I hope these visits will be for the development of their own, self-determined initiatives.