Ukraine Reconstruction Campaigner
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Anna is Bankwatch’s Ukraine Reconstruction Campaigner, working on green reconstruction and environmental safeguards in Ukraine’s recovery. Her work focuses on alternative sources of energy for communities, energy resilience, and the alignment of Ukraine’s energy policy and public investment management system with EU standards. Originally from Kyiv, she holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences and Policy from Central European University and is based in Bratislava.
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State of play at EU funds programming half time
December 28, 2013 | Read more
Analyses and comments elaborated and published in the course of the on-going programming process from May until December 2013 show that the draft planning documents fail to ensure sustainable development, are half-hearted in environmental protection, sideline partners and neglect communities.
Prompted by gross human rights violations in Egypt this letter asks for clarification how the EBRD can continue to operate in Egypt even though the EBRD’s mandate states that the bank operates in “countries committed to and applying the principles of multiparty democracy, pluralism and market economics” and its continued operations in Egypt therefore amount to a blatant violation of its commitments as a public institution.
While the EBRD’s founding document require it to “promote in the full range of its activities environmentally sound and sustainable development” more than half of the bank’s energy investments in Ukraine for the period 2006-2013 hardly served the purpose of sustainable development promotion. In this period the EBRD has supported nuclear energy production and new output capacities for nuclear power plants, export-oriented infrastructure, as well as controversial initiatives in the renewable energy sector.
Litmus test for EBRD rhetoric on democracy with Egyptian oil project
December 19, 2013 | Read more
On December 18 the EBRD board of directors approved a loan of USD 50 million to finance a project aimed at the expansion of oil operations and reducing gas flaring in Egypt. Yet the tenuous political situation in the country continues to raise concerns about the bank’s ability to make a positive contribution towards the democratic process, and whether it should be investing there at all.
At a closer look the EBRD’s new energy strategy, complimented for the restrictions it places on coal lending, reveals a shocking lack of operational knowledge to implement the ambitions outlined in its executive summary.
