Jaraslau Bekish: Belarusans don’t defend their interests

Even bearing in mind that the problem of the environmental protection is important for Belarusan people, their activity in the sphere of ecologic protection remains at low level.

This opinion shared to the EuroBelarus Information Service Jaraslau Bekish, the Coordinator of the ecological association “Green network”.

Recently within the scope of the EU Neighbourhood Barometer the citizens of the countries neighboring with the EU participated in the public opinion poll devoted to the ecologic and economic issues. Jaraslau Bekish commented upon the most interesting figures concerning the opinions of the Belarusans on the ecologic problems.

Inquiry:

How important is the environmental protection for you personally?

49 per cent of the Belarusans answered “Very important”, 43 per cent – “Rather important”, 5 per cent – “Not that important”, 1 per cent – “Not important at all”, “don’t know” – 2 per cent.

Jaraslau Bekish:

- On the one hand, such figures cannot be satisfying for the ecologic activists and organizations. Still, on the other, I am worried about the low social and civil activity in the ecologic sphere when the ecology occupies such high position on the scale of values. The fact that Belarusans don’t defend the interests that are important for them is not a good sign.

Different figures, i.e. higher than those in other regions than Minsk has can be easily explained: the city has lots of ecologic problems as well as the problem of dense build-up. However, the activity of Minsk citizens is higher, too, which is explained with the system of management that we have, when all the decisions are taken in Minsk. And that presupposes that the influence upon these decisions will be run here as well.

Inquiry:

In the future power requirement will be increased in lots of countries. At cost of which energy sources will this increasing requirement be satisfied in your opinion?

“At the expense of hydrocarbon resources (like petroleum, natural gas, coal)” – 13 per cent, “renewable energy sources (wind energy, water power plants)”  – 45 per cent, “nuclear energy” – 17 per cent, ::biomass energy (for instance, trees)”  – 3 per cent, “none of the above mentioned variants” – 6 per cent, “don’t know “– 15 per cent.

Jaraslau Bekish:

- Indeed, the potential of the renewable energy sources in Belarus is rather low in comparison with the potential of the increased potential power efficiency.

Renewable energy sources are a market trend everyone is talking about. But few people know with how many ecologic problems we would have to face when dealing with these technologies. Conversely, energy requirement can be considerably reduced if the power efficiency (starting from the manufacturing capacities) is increased.

The officials claim that all the potential of the power efficiency that could have been used without attracting solid investment has already been used.

But it isn’t true. If we consider the modernization of the already existing power grids, they have enormous potential for higher efficiency. Thus, if the money that are going for the building of the nuclear power plant in Astravets is redirected for the modernization of the power grids the economic effect, i.e. efficiency, would be much higher.

Inquiry:

Have you ever heard about the EU activity aimed at environmental protection in your country?

Only about 17 per cent of Belarusans gave the positive answer, while 83 per cent answered “no”.

Jaraslau Bekish:

The EU as the whole structure and its member countries allocate rather big amount money to solve ecologic problems in Belarus. But certain problems considerably level the positive effect of this funding.

First, the bigger part of this funding comes through UNDP system, the activity of which is not very transparent in Belarus.

Secondly, this money goes to the state bodies, mainly to the Ministry of natural Resources and Environmental Protection, which is by no means a transparent structure. Moreover, the questions of foreign aid are never discussed publicly. Dozens of millions of euro are lost in state budget, and for now there is no mechanism of public control.

This is not only our country’s problem; this is a European problem, too. No one pays attention to the transparency problem. Recently the first mechanism that enables the civil society to monitor the expenses has appeared - the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. However, being a new structure, it has just built up enough power to implement such activity.