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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The attention of the environmental community in Armenia has recently been focused on events swirling around the Deno Gold Mining Company (DGMC). The company has been contending with rising tensions in Kapan as a result of its laying off of workers at its gold mining operations coupled with failings at its Geghanush tailings facility. The controversies have arisen just as the company awaits disbursement of a new loan from the EBRD.
The new EBRD country strategy for Russia that will apply for 2013-2015 attracted input and comments from several human rights and environmental watchdogs, among them Human Rights Watch, WWF, Greenpeace and Bankwatch. As part of the consultation on the new strategy, NGOs expressed concerns about the current political and social situation in Russia as well as the dangers of natural resource development. The comments were incorporated into the strategy document but it remains unclear if NGOs were able to influence actual decision-making.
A European Bank for Reconstruction and Development loan to the SVL group, granted with no public oversight, threatens new oil-related catastrophes.
In its recent report, ‘The great enablers: how investments by international financial institutions threaten the fragile Caspian Sea ecosystem’, Crude Accountability describes how investments in the Caspian Sea region by international financial institutions, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, are contributing to the intensification of extraction of and trade in the region’s oil and gas.
This year’s flurry of reviews to EBRD sectoral, country and operational strategies has given civil society organisations plenty to think about and provide input on. However, in the case of at least one of the reviews, we already have a pretty good idea what we will say. Because we’ve said it before – several times.
