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Via Baltica – Another landmark victory for Polands nature, environmentalists remain vigilant

Last night’s decision by the Polish Council of Ministers on a new routing for the Via Baltica expressway [1]has been welcomed by campaigners from CEE Bankwatch Network, BirdLife International, OTOP – BirdLife Poland and other environmental groups as major progress for the conservation of Poland’s unique nature and represents a significant step in the right direction towards the proper implementation of Polish and European environmental legislation.

Nonetheless, the groups that have campaigned on a range of highly controversial major road plans in north-east Poland for some years now stressed that the new decree on the Via Baltica motorways and expressways’ network does not mark the end of their efforts to save a number of valuable sites – protected under the EU’s Natura 2000 network – from road construction plans in the region. [2]

According to the decree, the Polish part of the Via Baltica expressway – part of the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) – will have to be constructed in line with the recommendations made by experts and the findings of a Strategic Environmental Assessment that has taken several years to complete.

Such an outcome has been demanded by the European Parliament and Bern Convention as well as by environmental groups. This routing of the road via Lomza, confirmed now by the government, is not only the environmentally sound option but it is also valid on economic, traffic and social grounds. The decision means that the expected stream of heavy good vehicles will not have negative impacts on three Natura 2000 sites: the Biebrza Marshes, and the Knyszyn and Augustow Primeval Forests. However, it does not bring an automatic halt to current road construction work inside the Knyszyn Forest or other environmentally harmful road development plans in north-east Poland.

Marta Majka Wisniewska, Polish national coordinator for Bankwatch, said: “This decision from the Council of Ministers does not close the case of egregious road development in north-east Poland. There is a further need to change other strategic documents, in particular the current list of investments under the Operational Programme ‘Infrastructure & Environment’ and the Polish proposal on TEN-T revision. And, of course, the devil will be in the final implementation of today’s positive outcome.”

Malgorzata Gorska, Casework Officer of OTOP (BirdLife in Poland), commented: “As these road developments have been proceeding at high speed, Natura 2000 sites like the Knyszyn Forest and the Biebrza Marshes are still under threat. Our task is to ensure that all environmentally harmful road projects along the old routing of the Via Baltica, as queried by the European Commission, are halted or modified. With the new route for the Via Baltica corridor settled there is no need to continue with these large scale projects on the old route which will needlessly damage Natura 2000 sites.”

For more information

Marta Majka Wiśniewska, Polish Green Network, Warsaw
Email: mwisniewska AT bankwatch.org
Tel: +48 602888143

Malgorzata Gorska, the Polish Society for the Protection of the Birds (OTOP – BirdLife Poland), Trzcianne
Email: malgorzata.gorska AT otop.org.pl
Tel: +48 605072963

Notes for editors

1. Key Natura 2000 sites in north-east Poland are under threat of damage by a series of road projects on the so called ‘Via Baltica’ international road corridor, which will link Helsinki to Warsaw via Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The corridor upgrade is taking place as a series of separate individual projects (an approach commonly referred to as ‘salami-slicing’) rather than being planned in a strategic way. Polish NGOs have been campaigning on the Via Baltica case for over seven years, including referring the case to the Bern Convention and in 2006 submitting a complaint to the European Commission.

In March 2009 the Polish government decided to save the famous Rospuda valley in north-east Poland from destruction by one of the road projects. This particular section of Via Baltica had been routed through the Natura 2000 site “Augustow Forest” in north-east Poland, which includes the unique mires of the Rospuda valley. While the NGOs welcomed this decision they remain extremely concerned that the Polish authorities are continuing to progress other damaging ‘Via Baltica’ road projects such as the Białystok-Katrynka and Katrynka-Przewalanka Upgrades which will damage Knyszyn Primeval Forest.

For more background information about the Via Baltica controversies in Poland, see the Via Baltica campaign website.

2. The EU Birds and Habitats Directives require Member States to designate Natura 2000 sites to ensure the survival of the EU’s most threatened animal and plant species and their habitats. The ‘Natura 2000’ network of the EU covers about 18% of the EU’s territory, and aims to reconcile human activities with nature conservation. Together with the Habitats Directive, the Birds Directive forms the cornerstone of EU action to address the decline of biodiversity, which in combination with climate change is seen as the most pressing environmental problem of the 21st century. EU governments have committed to halting the loss of wildlife by 2010, and to implementing its nature legislation.

Natura 2000 sites are not fenced-off areas, but encourage sustainable and nature-friendly land-use and business. Article 6 of the Habitats Directive describes the process that needs to be followed for any plan or project to assess whether it would have a significant impact on the site. Such plans or projects, which could include mining, infrastructure or housing development, can generally only be authorised if they do not have a negative effect on the ecological integrity of the site. In other words, the species and/or habitats for which the site was selected as Natura 2000 site must be maintained in a good status.

Public consultations short-circuited for major Ukrainian power project, EBRD urged to stand up for communities and the environment

A major power transmission project in Ukraine that seeks a EUR 175 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to facilitate the export of electricity from Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant across protected nature sites in the south of Ukraine is violating the EBRD’s procedures on public consultations, according to Bankwatch member group National Ecological Centre of Ukraine (NECU).

On a recent fact-finding mission to the region, NECU representatives uncovered a highly haphazard approach from the project promoter Ukrenergo – Ukraine’s national power company – to a public consultation process already supposedly underway for two months, with a further two months still to run.

Yury Urbansky, Bankwatch’s national coordinator in Ukraine, said: “In several key locations in the region where these power lines will pass, we found big gaps in the availability of environmental impact documentation concerning the project. A major project like this one that seeks EBRD support is supposed to fulfill the bank’s public disclosure requirements to the full. Yet not only did we arrive at several sites where the relevant documentation was incomplete but we also faced active resistance from local officials unwilling to provide at least some of the required materials.”

A NECU letter to the EBRD details these public consultation failings from Ukrenergo and urges the bank to ensure the restarting of the process in line with its requirements. [1] Public hearings about the project are scheduled to take place at the end of this month.

Ukrenergo hopes to receive this EBRD loan to realise a 750 kV power line that will run between the Zaporizka nuclear power plant (NPP) and the Kakhovka substation. The main goal of this project, according to NECU, is outlined in Ukraine’s controversial energy strategy up to 2030, namely to deliver the export of domestically produced electric power abroad and to expand Zaporizkaya NPP from 6 to 8 power units.

Yury Urbansky continued: “There is a lot at stake with this project, including for local communities and the Lower Dnieper National Park, a reserve rich in biodiversity that is set to become a protected area. Public consultations on these high voltage power lines, with all the available project impact documentation, are absolutely vital. Ukrenergo has been talking up its prospects of securing the EBRD financing by the end of the year, but it has embarked on a reckless path to meet this timetable. The EBRD must insist on its standards being respected, and should take note of the corners already being cut by its potential client.”

For further information

Yury Urbansky, NECU/CEE Bankwatch Network
Email: urbik AT necu.org.ua
Tel.: +38 050 5123222

Notes for editors

1. The NECU letter is available at the Bankwatch website.

ArcelorMittal continues to pollute and uproot peoples lives


ArcelorMittal needs to move beyond good intentions on environmental and social improvements and turn words into deeds. Despite its rhetoric on social responsibility, the company continues to destroy the environment, risk peoples lives and displace local communities, according to a new report launched today by the Global Action on ArcelorMittal coalition [1] to coincide with the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Luxembourg.

Comprising case studies from seven countries ranging from the Czech Republic to India and South Africa, the report also reveals new problems emerging around ArcelorMittal’s iron ore mining operations in Nimba County, Liberia, including unclear resettlement plans for local people, a lack of permanent employment from the mine, threats to the Mount Nimba Nature Reserve, and a questionable donation of 100 pick-up trucks.

“According to ArcelorMittal the trucks were meant for ‘agricultural purposes’, but they have ended up being driven around Monrovia, Liberias capital city, with tinted windows by members of the Liberian legislature,” according to Silas Siakor from Friends of the Earth Liberia.

“ArcelorMittal is failing to live up to its promises to Liberia,” he continues. “The lack of transparency in the management of the Community Development Fund promised to impoverished Liberian communities and threats to the Mount Nimba Nature Reserve are of serious concern when one reflects on ArcelorMittal’s track record in other countries.”

In eastern Europe and South Africa, local people report that there has been little progress in reducing the high levels of air pollution from old steelmills acquired by ArcelorMittal.

“The company’s approach in South Africa has been to organise meetings with local communities to talk about reducing pollution rather than actually doing it,” said Samson Mokoena, Coordinator of the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance in South Africa.

“ArcelorMittal’s eastern European plants, such as those in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kazakhstan, have benefited from more than USD 600 million in taxpayer-backed loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation for environmental improvements in the last ten years. Yet there is little evidence of any absolute reduction in pollution. In Bosnia-Herzegovina it has taken three and a half years just to make an Environmental Action Plan, which has not yet been implemented,” said Pippa Gallop of CEE Bankwatch Network.

“We’ve been monitoring ArcelorMittal’s environmental and health and safety investments in Kazakhstan for several years now and nothing seems to have changed. The city of Temirtau is still choked with air pollution,” said Dana Sadykova of environmental NGO Karaganda Ecological Museum. “Thirty-five miners died in two separate incidents in ArcelorMittal’s Kazakh mines during 2008 and in spite of the EBRD-backed health and safety improvement project it is totally unclear what safety investments have been made.”

“Predictably ArcelorMittal is now using the economic crisis as an excuse to delay some of its environmental investments in the Czech Republic, but this is unacceptable,” said Jan Srytr of Environmental Law Service. “Protection against toxic pollution is not an added extra to be enjoyed during the good times a healthy environment is a fundamental right. The company should use this period of lowered production to install improved pollution control equipment and more efficient technologies.”

For more information

To arrange interviews with:

– Silas Siakor, Sustainable Development Institute, Liberia
– Sunita Dubey, groundWork USA, Co-ordinator of Global Action on ArcelorMittal
– Dana Sadykova, Karaganda Eco-Museum, Kazakhstan
– Samson Mokoena, Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance

Please contact:
Darek Urbaniak, Friends of the Earth Europe,
Tel: +32 495 460 258 (Belgian mobile)
Email: darek.urbaniak AT foeeurope.org

or
Paul De Clerck,
Friends of the Earth International/Friends of the Earth Europe
Tel: +32 494 380 959
Email: paul.de.clerck AT foeeurope.org

Ostrava, Czech Republic:
Jan Srytr, GARDE programme of the Environmental Law Service, Czech Republic
Tel: +420 775 154 087
Email: jan.srytr AT eps.cz

Omarska, Bosnia-Herzegovina:
Branko Andjic, Eko-Pokret Omarska, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Tel: +387 654 945 89
Email: brankoandj AT gmail.com

Cernavoda 3 + 4 nuclear reactor, Romania:
Jan Haverkamp
Tel: +32 477 790 416
Email: jan.haverkamp AT greenpeace.org

Notes for editors:

[1] The new report ArcelorMittal: Going Nowhere Slowly: A review of the global steel giant’s environmental and social impacts in 2008-2009 reviews the company’s environmental and social impacts during the year since the coalition published its first report on the company in May 2008.

It is available on the websites of Global Action on ArcelorMittal and Bankwatch.

The new report includes case studies from Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, India, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Romania and South Africa. In addition to pollution problems from existing plants the report includes case studies on two new planned investments. ArcelorMittal’s plans to build two giant steel mills in the Indian states of Orissa and Jharkhand are heavily opposed by local tribal people, who would be displaced from their land. In Romania, the company is planning to participate in the controversial Cernavoda 3 and 4 nuclear reactors using Candu-6 technology, which critics such as Greenpeace claim is outdated and dangerous.

Global Action on ArcelorMittal is a network of community and environmental groups from around the world who are working to get ArcelorMittal to invest in pollution prevention and health and safety at its steel mills and coal and iron ore mines. It includes CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth. For more details see the network’s website.

Last years report In the wake of ArcelorMittal can be found on the Bankwatch website.

Campaigners hail major victory as Polish government announces the saving of Rospuda Valley

Today’s announcement by the Polish government that the Rospuda Valley, a Natura 2000 protected area, is not to be devastated by a major bypass road has been hailed by campaigners from CEE Bankwatch Network, OTOP – Birdlife Poland, Greenpeace Poland and WWF Poland as a major victory for the environment, for Polish and European law and for the general public interest.

Robert Cyglicki, Polish national coordinator for Bankwatch, said: “We are delighted that the Polish government has finally seen sense and that this case has come to a satisfactory conclusion. All the same, it is deeply regretable that we have lost two years and that people living in the town of Augustow will need to wait for the required bypass a bit longer, all because of the blind obstinacy of the former government and the stance it took on the Rospuda Valley, one of Poland’s and Europe’s natural treasures.”

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk today announced a new route for the expressway that will relieve the north-east Polish town of Augustow of heavy transit traffic. The bypass, part of the Via Baltica road transport corridor that is due to stretch down the right hand side of Poland, will now be constructed near the nearby village of Raczki.

However, the groups cautioned about alarming construction and planning activities currently ongoing elsewhere along the Via Baltica corridor.

Marta Majka Wiśniewska, of WWF Poland, said: “Today’s good news about Rospuda should serve as a wake-up call to governments and road-builders around central and eastern Europe that the region’s natural beauty can not be sacrificed to bulldozers. This is not the end of Polish road shenanigans and our government must learn the Rospuda lesson.”

Malgorzata Gorska, Important Bird Area Casework Officer of OTOP, said: “South of Rospuda, there are already advanced plans on building express roads through three more major Natura 2000 sites – the Knyszyn Primeval Forest, the Biebrza Marshes and the Augustow Primeval Forest. More European money will be sought for these projects even though the developers are ignoring strategic assessments which suggest viable, less damaging alternatives for the Via Baltica road corridor. We stand ready to take the Rospuda momentum forward.”

Maciej Muskat, of Greenpeace Poland, said: “We are happy to see that the Polish government is going to win this case for nature and people. At the same time we are deeply concerned about the lack of action regarding the re-routing of the whole Via Baltica expressway, a part of which is the Augustow bypass, in accordance with expert analysis and recommendations.”

For more information

Robert Cyglicki, Polish Green Network/Bankwatch, Szczecin, robertc at bankwatch.org, +48 501101769.

Marta Majka Winiewska, WWF Poland, Warsaw, mwisniewska at wwf.pl, +48 602888143.

Malgorzata Gorska, the Polish Society for the Protection of the Birds (OTOP/BirdLife Poland), Biaystok, malgorzata.gorska at otop.org.pl, +48 605072963.

Maciej Muskat, Greenpeace Poland, maciej.muskat at greenpeace.pl, +48509058651

First tranche of EIB car “crisis” loans requires scrutiny, warn Bankwatch and Greenpeace


The European Investment Bank (EIB) has today extended EUR 3 billion in soft loans to eight European carmakers for the development and production of cleaner vehicles.[1] CEE Bankwatch Network and Greenpeace call on the EIB to ensure that money goes to initiatives with a true impact on cutting carbon emissions from cars and not just to small-scale greenwash projects.

EU carmakers are already bound by EU legislation to reduce the climate impact of cars. [2] The EIB has underlined that its role is not to bail out the struggling car industry. [3]

“We need to make sure that these loans go to projects which reduce carbon emissions and not to window dressing for the car industry. Carmakers should be held accountable and deliver on their promises to green their fleets. If they do not, EIB loans should be recalled,” said Franziska Achterberg, Greenpeace EU transport policy campaigner.

Pippa Gallop, Research coordinator at Bankwatch, said: “It is hard to see which car companies are not in need of restructuring, with over-capacity estimated at about 20 percent. With the rapid approval of new car loans the EIB needs to make sure that the appraisal of the viability of the projects is not compromised.”

Contacts

Pippa Gallop
Research Co-ordinator, CEE Bankwatch Network
Email: pippa.gallop AT bankwatch.org

Franziska Achterberg
Greenpeace EU transport campaigner
Email: franziska.achterberg AT greenpeace.org

Notes for editors

1. The car and lorry companies include Daimler, BMW, Fiat, Renault, Peugeot-Citroen, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks and Scania. Germanys third independent producer, Volkswagen, already received a EUR 400m loan on 17 February for the development and market launch of greener and more fuel efficient drive train components for passenger cars and utility vehicles. The loans come under the EIBs Clean Transport Facility and are restricted to activities aimed at cutting emissions. They are limited to EUR 400 million per company per year.

2. During last year’s negotiations on the EUs first ever CO2 emission standard for cars, all eight car companies insisted that they could not achieve the required emission cuts by 2012. Bowing to pressure from the car industry, the EU delayed full implementation of the standard to 2015.

3. In an interview in the Financial Times on February 17, 2009, EIB President Philippe Maystadt commented that: “The EIB is not there to substitute for structural reforms that might be needed by some companies. I want to make clear our role is to support viable projects.”

EU billions earmarked for environmental devastation in central and eastern Europe

“RegioScars” awards for the most unsustainable spending of EU funds in Central and Eastern Europe were awarded today by CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth Europe. The prizes went to two projects in the Czech Republic and Poland currently in line for support from EU regional aid, and to Latvia’s government for a decision to rule out wind energy projects from EU funds support because of the economic crisis.

The “RegioScars” from the environmental organisations have gone to plans to build 12 large waste incinerators in Poland – set to consume over EUR 1.2 billion of EU money while Polish waste recycling efforts continue to suffer from lack of funding – and the R52 expressway in the Czech Republic that seeks to connect the Czech city of Brno with Vienna via a route that would adversely affect a UNESCO-designated area and three Natura 2000 sites in the south-east of the Czech Republic. [1]

As the European Commission prepares to hand out “RegioStars awards” on Monday evening for “the most inspiring and innovative projects funded by the EU’s Cohesion Policy” including climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, a last minute “RegioScar” award has been awarded to the Latvian government’s decision last week to cut EU funds allocations – already a meagre EUR 10 million – for wind energy development in a country where no new wind turbine has been erected since 2000.

Magda Stoczkiewicz, Director of Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “While the European Commission is calling for the billions of euros that are involved in the EU funds to be used smartly by the member states in this time of economic and environmental crisis, in the eastern member states we continue to see a cavalier approach to proposing projects that are at best environmentally and economically dubious and at worst totally obsolete.

“Twelve major incinerator projects, up from a proposed nine last year, are now in the frame for consuming the bulk of Poland’s EU funds for waste initiatives. Such projects are notoriously unpopular, create far fewer jobs than cheaper recycling measures and do nothing to tackle the underlying problem of excessive consumption. In the Polish city of Wroclaw, the incinerator approach has been ignored in favour of a waste sorting facility that is able to deal much less harmfully with the area’s waste, at a cost of EUR 4 million. Throwing EU billions almost exclusively at waste incineration stinks of irresponsibility in the current climate.”

Anelia Stefanova, EU affairs coordinator for CEE Bankwatch Network, said: “Of the Commission’s small number of nominees for climate-friendly RegioStars awards, not one project comes from the new member states where so much remains to be done in terms of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

“Latvia’s recently announced decision to cut EU-funded support for wind energy should serve as a wake-up call to the Commission as it seeks to push greater sums of money towards much-needed sustainable energy projects across Europe. Where the need is greatest, in central and eastern Europe, the most vigilance is still required if available money is not to be squandered on nonsensical business as usual projects.”

For more information, contact:

Greig Aitken
Media coordinator
CEE Bankwatch Network
Tel: 00420 605 216 705
Email: press AT bankwatch.org

Notes for editors:

1. Background information about the Polish incinerator projects and the R52 expressway in the Czech Republic is available at the online map.

Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth Europe have worked together over the last ten years to promote the sustainable use of EU funds in central and eastern Europe. More information available at our map of EU projects.

Please note, by mistake the original release of this press release described that the R52 expressway would “cross” a UNESCO site and three Natura 2000 sites. This has been corrected and we apologise for the error.