C O O P E R A T I O N
by Christy Duijvelaar
Cooperation among environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is the way of the future; indeed, it may be the key to solving many of Europe's larger environmental problems. For years environmental movements in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe survived and worked on their own, if they existed at all. Then came The Change, and with it a plethora of Western development organizations and funding agencies just dying to lend a helping hand. But after five years of intensive economic change, environmental issues in CEE no longer top the political priority list. Western funders and politicians are looking further East or going home. Now, environmental NGOs in CEE must find their own means of support.
"Now is the time for East-East cooperation. The NGO community is growing stronger and becoming more and more experienced. Naturally, the new challenges will be in the field of international cooperationÑlike East-East cooperation," says Przemyslaw Czajkowski, Milieukontakt Oost-Europa's country consultant for Poland and the author of the introduction to the Polish chapter in the Regional Environmental Center's NGO Directory.
Many people involved in the environmental movement in Central and Eastern Europe are already aware of the growing interest in East-East cooperation. The REC, for instance, has given special attention to East-East cooperation since the beginning of 1995, and is now encouraging East-East cooperation by offering earmarked grants specifically for projects that involve transboundary cooperation among NGOs. Such projects are favored because they improve the efficiency, effectiveness and strength of the environmental movement in the region.
East-East cooperation depends on common interests. It is also a matter of human relations and good personal contact, so it is absolutely necessary to bring people together in order to establish East-East links. Mutual understanding and cooperation provides opportunities to tackle environmental problems on a larger scale, to show alternatives to nationalistic political tendencies and to establish one voice for all of Central and Eastern Europe. By banding together to prevent pollution and preserve nature, environmental NGOs can accomplish much more than meets the eye.
But what does the term East-East cooperation really mean? For the purpose of a recent study I conducted as part of my thesis, it means issue-oriented cooperation among environmental NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe. Based on this definition, environmental activists from twenty-five NGOs involved in East-East cooperation were interviewed as part of a comprehensive research project on cooperation among environmental NGOs in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. These meetings brought me close to the experiences and thoughts of those environmentalists who are making an impact in this region, people who stress the importance of cooperation to the future of the environmental movement in Central and Eastern Europe. The results of this research are being used by the REC to bring environmental NGOs in the region even closer together.
Because pollution doesn't stop at national borders, the environmental movement stands to gain more than other sectors from increased NGO cooperation. The transboundary nature of environmental problems demands that experts and citizens from different countries band together to search for answers. Necessity often motivates NGOs to contact potential partners across borders. For instance, wolves which are protected in the Czech Republic easily may be shot if they cross into Poland, so conservation organizations on both sides of the border need to be involved. The need for common regulations and projects to protect the Danube River basin, and the establishment of a common protected area for the White Carpathian mountains that straddle the Czech-Slovak border also require NGOs to cooperate with their next-door neighbors. Finally, close cooperation can prevent the duplication of efforts, allowing the environmental movement as a whole to reach higher levels of efficiency.
Although the problems are many, and at times seemingly unconquerable, most of the NGOs interviewed during the research project believe that East-East cooperation is a strong strategy for developing the environmental movement in the region. Almost all are convinced that the future of the green movement lies in increased East-East cooperation, and they all plan to keep the partners they have and, if possible, to find new ones.
The most important requirement for any type of cooperative activity is willingness and desire. Once organizations willingly consider such cooperation, they will usually find ways to overcome the obstacles and to deal with recurring problems. This is good news, for in the long run, the benefits of cooperation will far outweigh the burdens of implementation. These benefits will go beyond the NGOs themselves, by helping to solve region-wide environmental problems and to increase the influence of the entire environmental NGO community.
East-East cooperation may be the next step towards Europe-wide and even global cooperation. "East-East cooperation should become European cooperation within the next ten years," says Krystyna Wolniakowski, international director of the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe. "The whole of Europe should be one heterogeneous geographical entity without borders."
Think globally, act locally: this tired old greenism receives new life when applied to the environmental movement in Central and Eastern Europe.
