What is this about?

The following map depicts data from the European Environmental Agency’s 2019 ‘Air quality in Europe‘ report, deaths attributable to PM2.5 per one hundred thousand.

Over the last three years, Bankwatch has made a reputation in the Balkan region of demonstrating the connection between burning coal, power plant facilities like open cast mines and ash disposal dumps and air pollution in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

We have witnessed an increase in awareness about this link and growing community opposition, even some local authorities are shifting the blame on the power plant and its facilities, rather than the preferred traffic mantra.

We want to build up on previous experience with independent air pollution monitoring in the Balkan region and further strengthen the opposition to new coal capacities and to poorly enforced air pollution current measures, by expanding both the geographical scope of our activities – approaching the angle of transboundary impacts – as well as the target groups.

The outcome of the work would be a tight and unified pollution control legislation in Energy Community countries, aligned to the EU one and implementation mechanisms in place that would no longer allow existing coal power plants of the region to endanger environmental and social living conditions.

Location

The race will take place in Bucharest’s King Mihai I Park. The paved course will be one loop of five kilometres with visible markings that will be announced closer to the date.

The exact course route will be made available closer to the time of the event, and will be downloadable as  .gpx or .kml file for devices. The map below is an approximation.