S O F I A W A T C H
No one ever said it would be easy. As Serb threats and artillery rained down on Zagreb, the proposed site of the last NGO strategy meeting before the Sofia conference, organizers were forced to move the gathering to higher ground, far out of reach of any peril to life and limb.
"We were a little disappointed. We expected more people," says Kliment Mindjov, president of Borrowed Nature and a key member of the NGO Working Group for Pan-European Environment that is preparing the strategy they will take to his native Bulgaria at the end of October. "Not everyone came, probably because of security reasons."
The disappointment evident in his voice over attendance quickly disappeared when we switched to talk of another kind: the outcome. "We are now prepared with a proposal that will be presented at the next session of the [UN ECE] Senior Government Official Working Group to be held in Geneva on 31 July," he says confidently.
The proposal is not a kind one, and it echoes much of what some government officials, especially those from CEE, have already been saying about the Environmental Programme for Europe (EPE) at their government meetings. On behalf of the NGO community, Mindjov expressed bitter disappointment with the EPE document.
"A lot of time was lost because many documents were not prepared. The EPE document is not completed - only fragments exist," he says. "There have been no follow-up on statements made about Dobris and Lucerne. Those preparing the EPE have forgotten a lot of promises made at those conferences."
The meeting was more than just a chance to criticize what has, or hasn't, already been done. Those who made it to the alternative site in Groznjan, a little town in Istra, just south of Trieste, pulled together to finalize what they think should happen in Sofia. These ideas have all been incorporated into the document being presented in Geneva. Called "Quality Benchmarks," it spells out the objectives and demands of Europe's NGO community. It focuses on four priorities the NGO Working Group chose way back in January 1994 as the most important environmental issues for Europe. These include the Environmental Program for Europe, successful implementation of the EAP adopted at Lucerne, the normalization of public participation in environmental decisionmaking, and the issue of biodiversity. Each of these issue groups also prepared a position paper that will be presented in Sofia.
It is not until the parallel conference that the NGO Working Group will actually choose the delegation that will attend the Pan-European Ministers' Conference. In what seems to be a contentious issue, NGOs are having a hard time deciding who will attend the parallel conference and who will represent their carefully planned strategy at the official function.
"We know in principle who will take part but practically the list will not be adopted until the parallel conference," says Mindjov.
This indecision dates back to the 1993 Lucerne Conference where Europe's ministers of environment adopted the now famous EAP document. Many felt at that time that NGOs were unprepared and uninformed about the entire process, says Marga Verheije of Milieukontakt Oost-Europa in a recent phone interview. In fact, NGOs didn't even begin to prepare for the Lucerne Conference until it was already underway.
There are still those who feel NGOs haven't done as much as they could have in preparation for an event they knew was coming two years in advance. "European NGOs have failed to organize a coherent effort over the last two years. There has been a serious lack of coordination and cooperation between large international policy NGOs and the local, direct-action NGOs," says Janos Zlinszky from REC head office. "NGOs are better prepared than they were at Lucerne, and they have accomplished some things, like the film festival and awareness raising. But they definitely could have presented what they have done more skillfully."
Part of the reason cooperation has been less than complete may be a result of apathy. "Not everyone is interested in Sofia. There's just not much to be excited about the EPE process. Governments didn't do anything for so long," says John Hontelez from Friends of the Earth Europe. "And now that they have, it still isn't interesting."
"The Sofia conference is part of a process. Can we influence it? Maybe yes, maybe no. [The conference itself] is not so important. What is important is the possibility to influence environmental decisionmaking at the international level," says Elizabeth Schmuck from the Hungarian Society of Nature. Mindjov says the impact NGOs will have goes far beyond the single conference being held in late October. He hopes both the official conference and the NGO parallel affair will draw the international mass media and attract the public's attention.
"We want to speak about the follow-up to the Sofia conference. What will be done after the conference?" he asks.
What, indeed?