 'ENVIRONMENT FOR EUROPE' is coming to Kyiv By Lyudmila PEKAR |
Who can tell why conferences happen, particularly in certain cities and towns, but not in others?
No matter why this is, documents adopted at such conferences are forever related with the names of those cities: Bonn Convention, Bern Convention, Aarhus Convention... A new document will appear in May-June of this year. Currently specialists from many countries of Europe are working on its draft. This time it will be the Kyiv Convention.
Five years ago the Fourth All-European Conference of the Ministers of Environment Protection took place in the small Danish town of Aarhus. The well-known Aarhus convention "On public access to information, public participation in decision-making process and public access to justice in the issues regarding natural environment" was adopted there. Ukraine signed this convention the same year. In Aarhus Kyiv was chosen to be the place for the next fifth regular convention under the general name "Environment for Europe". Guests, numbering 1500 from 55 countries will arrive in Kyiv. And not only from European countries.
Recently a head of one of the green and women public organizations said confidently in her interview to Ukrainian radio that Kyiv had been chosen for the Fifth conference because post-Soviet countries fall behind in the sphere of environment protection. These countries have to be helped in such a way, so to say.
This is not exactly so, but everybody can understand her logic. As a hint: help - give me a grant.
If the ecological situation on the post-Soviet space had impartially been the worst, then perhaps "Environment for Europe" would have started not in the West, but in the East. The conference took place in Prague and Sofia, and through Denmark reaches Kyiv in the best season of the year. This looks more like a just approach in giving attention than the arrival of firemen. And it's necessary to mention: these meetings are not devoted to the state of the environment, but only to the legislation on it.
During the last 100 years human consumption of natural resources has grown almost hundred times. Now even in space the mass of human-caused waste has reached the level of four-five thousand tons, which is 150 times more than the mass of natural objects in the circumterrestrial space environment.
Ukraine is neither a pioneer nor an exception in this global process. During the year of 2001 about 60 million tons of polluting substances went into the atmospheric air, water and earth. Three fourth's of them are toxic. Air pollution exceeds allowed norms in the majority of industrial cities.
Water in half of the village wells don't meet sanitary requirements. Currently in Ukraine there are no surface reservoirs, from which one can drink without precautions. Chlorination disinfects water, but this process is not among the safe ones. Ozoning and exposure to ultraviolet rays are considered to be better ways, but they are more expensive, and few Ukrainian cities can afford to have such a luxury.
However, specialists from the Institute of Colloid Chemistry and Water of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine believe all methods of drinking water purifying are imperfect. Although water in Kyiv is checked by 80 parameters - the requirement of the World Health Organization - these specialists have proposed to simply install points with water pumps on streets where water is pumped from the depth of 200-300 meters.
The parliament of Ukraine has adopted a national state program for development of the water sector of the economy. However, the program like many others is not been fulfilled from the very beginning. Every year the state budget forecasts the financing of such programs, but in reality only twenty-seven per cent of the necessary amount of money is allocated. Instead of looking for money resources for solving urgent problems, specialists of corresponding state departments and local administrators try to impress with numbers and examples; how many times the pipes of water system of Ukraine can encircle the equator of the Earth and what percentage of these pipes is in critical condition.
Maybe such an irresponsible approach has been caused by democracy, namely by workforce flow. An official knows that in several years he/she will be doing something else, and therefore doesn't care what is going to happen after he/she leaves.
But being a czar - that's a different case. The fate of his successors depends on him. So if he doesn't take care of the troubles of his country - what can he leave behind for his successors? By the way, the sewage system in L'viv was built 150 years ago. At that time the city was under the rule of Austrian-Hungarian power for a while. Although it was not known how long L'viv would belong to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the latter took care of the well-being of its residents.
Now the issue of changing of 150-year equipment has come up for the current generation of L'viv residents. In contrast to Donetsk or Odessa that have always earned money for themselves, L'viv has always existed on donations, but from now on one can no longer hope for outside investments.
Several years ago a big accident happened at the purification sewage facilities of Kharkiv - a city with over million residents. But the equipment necessary for elimination of such accidents wasn't available in the whole Ukraine. Such equipment was provided by... NATO.
This is what we have, but the ecological situation in foreign countries is no better. I was very surprised when I wasn't allowed to swim in the Danube River. In this respect there are no complaints regarding water in the Dnipro River. (In summer there are hundreds of thousands of swimmers on the banks of the river.) And let's hope there will never be any complaints.
The situation in the sphere of environmental protection in Ukraine is advantageously better in some respects than in developed countries; in other respects it is worse. Only recently Ukraine has faced the problems that were painful for the West in the 60s of the last century, and sometimes even in the 19th century.
The Ukrainian legislation on environment protection takes into account the Western experience. Therefore, the Ukrainian legislation is considered to be some of the best. The problem is that in reality it is not always being adhered to.
The following was written in the resolution on the parliamentary discussion of the draft "On adherence to requirements and effectiveness of legislation on environment protection": "Non-fulfillment of programs and measures... has become a custom."
According to calculations, the land of Ukraine is capable under certain conditions of feeding 300 - 320 million people. The small country of the Netherlands feeds many times more people than its population. And 57 per cent of Ukrainian territory is ploughed, and 17 per cent of Ukrainian territory remains wild and natural.
For example, personally I don't want Ukraine to become the breadbasket of Europe. Moreover, as of today Ukraine is not expected to perform such a role. The European Union doesn't have enough markets to sell its own agriculture production. And objectively, the Ukrainian agriculture products will not be the cheapest due to Ukraine's rather severe climate, expensive energy, and imperfect technology.
It would have been better if Ukraine become rich like Japan - exporting intellectual products. Then Ukraine would evaluate itself based on its high level of education of Ukrainian population, which (level) is known in the whole world. Then the country wouldn't be "pushing" its population into agriculturists that don't have any equipment, as it is now happening with the so-called "Ukrainian farming". Then the country would plant forests, as it was during the times of our ancestors, on land areas that are "worn out" because of plowing for a thousand years. Then the country would use hot water from geothermal electric stations in the way Icelanders use their geothermal springs: for the growing of bananas and roses. Then the waste from refuse heaps of the coal mines and terraces of metallurgical plants would be used for construction, and in their place forests would be standing green.
Editor's Note
Representatives of the 55 member states of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will be present in Kyiv this May 21-23rd. See Readers Forum Section with Announcements for further details and information.
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More in the section:
Springtime Travel to Sevastopol
Read also previous issue' articles:
THE EAR: Time to Stop Traffic Terror
The USSR: What was it?
Socialist Realism From One Collector's Viewpoint
Weak Laws Make Ukraine Europe's Dumping Ground
Social Entrepreneurship Expands in Ukraine
Lenin and Ukraine
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