A Regional Network: Aarhus Centres in South-Eastern Europe
If you look at the waterways, there is hardly a region more interconnected than South-Eastern Europe. Ninety per cent of its territory is part of a transboundary river basin. Thirteen mighty rivers run their course through two countries or more: the Sava river basin connects four, the Drin five; the Danube’s basin far exceeds the bound of South-Eastern Europe, extending over nineteen countries. It makes sense, therefore, for environmentalists in the region to join forces. That is what the OSCE-supported Aarhus Centres in South-Eastern Europe have done.
The cyclone that swept South-Eastern Europe in the spring of 2014 provided the wake-up call. In the aftermath of the flooding and landslides that caused scores of deaths, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and billions of dollars of damage, the importance of co-ordination across borders for early warning, rescue and recovery became clear. Last March, the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities and the OSCE Presence in Albania invited 40 South-Eastern European government authorities and international experts to Tirana to reflect on different approaches for public participation in the management of transboundary water resources. Each of the Aarhus Centres from the region was represented.
As of January 2016, there are 14 Aarhus Centres in South-Eastern Europe, in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. They are dedicated to the implementation of the Aarhus Convention, to which each of these states is a party. The Aarhus Convention establishes the right of all people to participate fully in environmental decisions affecting their lives. The Aarhus Centres help them to exercise that right by providing information, organizing public hearings, facilitating dialogue on pressing environmental issues. They also provide basic legal advice to citizens, citizen groups and civil society organizations on access to justice in case their right to information and public participation has been violated. Matters of concern might be local, like pollution from a garbage dump, or national, like a new draft law on environmental protection. Or, as in the case of transboundary waterways, they may transcend state boundaries.
Regional questions dominated the discussions of the Aarhus Centre representatives when they met in Tirana. But they also shared reflections on challenges of their day to day work. It became clear that they could benefit from working together more closely. In June, in Vienna, at the meeting of Aarhus Centres organized annually by the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities that brought together over 100 Aarhus Convention stakeholders from the OSCE region, the South-Eastern European Aarhus Centres signed a Joint Declaration formalizing their co-operation. The regional network of South-Eastern European Aarhus Centres was born.
Communication first
What does the network mean in practice? First and foremost, it strengthens avenues of communication. Each Aarhus Centre works in its own local context, but all serve the same aim and face similar challenges. Touching base with colleagues can help. “We are in contact all the time, by Facebook or phone. Each Aarhus Centre can offer its own expertise in a different field. I, for example, am a lawyer, someone else may be an environmentalist or a biologist,” says Robert Murataj, manager of the Aarhus Centre in Vlore, Albania. Darija Šajin, in Novi Sad, Serbia, has used her childhood education expertise to develop an interactive environmental awareness programme targeting pupils called Smart Schools, which she has shared with the network.
Even dissimilarities can help put one’s own work in perspective. Viktor Bjelić, who manages the Aarhus Centre in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, explains how he compares notes with colleagues in Serbia: “Whereas in Serbia the Aarhus Centres are located mainly in urban areas, the communities we serve are both urban and rural. In urban areas, disaster risk reduction concerns mostly floods and earthquakes. In rural areas, there are also landslides and forest fires. And there are problems with illegal agricultural practices, burning of agricultural waste, for instance. So the approach needs to be different. We organize lectures on how to use agricultural waste as fertilizer. In urban areas, people have access to information through the Internet. In rural areas, this is not the case. They need to be informed by means of printed information. Also, in rural areas, community solidarity is stronger and people are better connected.”
Shared challenges
The main focus of co-operation among the Aarhus Centres is transboundary challenges: water governance and disaster risk reduction. Each has worked in its respective community in the aftermath of the 2014 floods to improve early warning and rapid response.
In Novi Sad, Šajin and her colleagues created a broad network of stakeholders for co-ordinating action in the event of future disaster. “We believe we have started a dialogue that will make the community stronger and safer,” she says. The Banja Luka team conferred with them to identify who should participate. “They accepted our suggestion to include health care and animal welfare agencies, as well as insurance and agricultural companies,” Bjelić says. For its part, the Aarhus Centre in Banja Luka took a different approach, analysing the legal framework and creating a manual that gives municipalities the tools they need for developing their own risk reduction plans.
In Albania, winter floods are a frequent occurrence. Last year, 2,000 hectares were flooded near Vlore and thousands of farmers had to be evacuated. “We asked the local government to prohibit building in areas of risk and to collect the telephone numbers of all residents, so they can be warned in advance,” Murataj says.
In December, the network of South-Eastern European Aarhus Centres and municipalities convened in two separate groups for three and a half days of training and exchange on disaster risk reduction. Those from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina met in Sarajevo, those from Albania and Montenegro in Budva, Montenegro. National experts and a trainer from Switzerland provided detailed advice on hazard mapping and risk assessment practices. The participants found the field visits and hands-on work organized as part of the training extremely useful. Such trainings go a long way in developing contacts and partnerships between local governments and Aarhus Centres to the benefit of increased community participation in local disaster risk reduction plans.
Aarhus Centres are all about nature and people, but their task is highly political. They need to win the trust of authorities so that they can liaise with them effectively on the part of the public. A highlight of the week of training was that municipal representatives were also present and engaged in cross-border exchange. “It was a good occasion to gain their confidence so that we can work towards a partnership for the benefit of our local communities,” Šajin comments. “Municipalities recognize the Aarhus Centres as reference points for educating the community. We are staying in touch with participants of the training course in Budva, to continue sharing ideas,” Murataj says.
Aarhus Centres were first initiated by the OSCE in 2002, and now number 60 in 14 countries, in South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Another example of cross-border co-operation in the Aarhus Centres Network is between the Aarhus Centres in Osh, Kyrgyzstan and Khujand, Tajikistan, in Central Asia’s fertile Ferghana Valley. They formalized their relationship in a Memorandum of Understanding in 2014. The two Aarhus Centres share the Soviet legacy of uranium tailing dumps which pose a serious environmental, security and health hazard and implement joint activities in raising awareness on the risks related to uranium sites as well as to natural disasters.
Both in South-Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, stronger cross-border Aarhus Centre co-operation could contribute to enhanced political co-operation in the future. “All of us in the Balkans are aiming to be part of the European Union family,” says Murataj in Albania. “We need to have more workshops like the one in Budva. They enable us to identify issues of common concern and discuss ways to address them jointly. Co-operation between civil society organizations working for good governance and the environment is a necessity,” he concludes.
Read more:
Safeguarding the environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Aarhus-style: www.osce.org/bih/217156
The Aarhus Centres: a Brief Introduction: www.osce.org/secretariat/89067
Websites of Aarhus Centres across the OSCE region: www.osce.org/secretariat/160246