S O F I A R E P O R T
Sunlight filtered through high, tinted windows, bathing the airy room with natural light. Crystals, formed by of the earth long ago, lined the halls like soldiers, sparkling blue and purple and white. Bold photos spoke silently of mankind's ambivalent relationship with the planet: rainbows and storms, oceans and oil slicks, fire and ice.
This was the scene at Sofia's Earth and Man Museum, site of the NGO "Environment for Europe" Parallel Conference. The setting became even more appropriate when one looked across the street at Bulgaria's National Palace of Culture, the concrete and glass monolith that hosted the official Pan-European "Environment for Europe" Ministerial Conference. The NGOs had done it right.
Representatives and members of NGOs from all over Europe had gathered in Sofia on the second-last weekend in October to teach and learn and dialogue about the "Europe for Environment" (EfE) process that was being debated next door. And apart from the dates (the NGO conference actually began two days before the official one) the NGO gathering did indeed "parallel" the proceedings at the official conference.
Despite similar topics, the mood in the NGO camp was quite different than in the Palace of Culture. There, at least on the surface, government officials from East and West had gathered on an equal plane to discuss environmental issues they thought were important. In the museum, however, the NGO dialogue reminded one of teachers lecturing students, often from West to East.
"The [NGO] conference has really been dominated by Western NGOs. NGOs from Central and Eastern Europe are only on the periphery and have had very little input," says one NGO participant, a Bulgarian who now lives in the West.
While it's true that NGOs like Milieukontakt Oost-Europa and Friends of the Earth International are quite active in Central and Eastern Europe, they are largely western organizations that are often more experienced and better trained than their eastern counterparts. It is they that dominated the scene in Sofia. At first sight, this might seem problematic for a major NGO conference being held in CEE, but it can be seen in another light, as an exercise in capacity building for both western and eastern NGOs. Most of the activity at the NGO conference was aimed at educating attendees, mostly Bulgarians, about the EfE process: what it was, how it worked and where it failed. By this token, the NGO conference was a very edifying experience for most.
NGOs in general are infamous for their inability to successfully organize events like this one; this time they did, and did it well, and that in itself is a victory. The preparatory process provided re-sources that might not have been available otherwise. And it allowed western and CEE NGOs to develop stronger ties, building the organizational capacity of both experienced and inexperienced groups, and moving toward a scenario where "west" and "east" are simply directions and not qualitative labels.
The NGO conference served another purpose: that of watchdog over the official preparations and proceedings. From their head office in the museum, as well as a press office in the Palace of Culture, NGO organizers kept tabs on their governmental colleagues at the "other" conference, helping them make sound decisions and criticizing them when they swayed from the path.
The Environmental Program for Europe adopted by the ministers is a good example. "The final text is not really a program. It is still only a collection of general principles. But if we hadn't been involved, the paper would have been really embarrassing," says John Hontelez, chairman of Friends of the Earth International and one of the leaders of the NGO Coalition.
In the end, the parallel conference really played very little role in the back-room drama of the official conference. Of course, the NGO delegation that took part received the blessing of its peers within the walls of the Earth and Man Museum, as did the declaration they took with them. But where the NGO conference really triumphed was as a focal point for NGOs across Europe to meet and greet, and hopefully develop ways to cooperate in the future.
As always, there are those in the NGO community who feel the entire "Environment for Europe" process is flawed, and so believe that NGOs are wasting their time. But this is the exception rather than the rule:
"The most important part of the process is the participation aspect. This process gives a forum for NGOs to work together and make contacts," says Theresa Herzog, project leader of the Swiss NGO Coordination Unit for the Sofia conference. "And because of this process, it was possible to raise funds and get together. This wouldn't have been possible without the Sofia conference."