Air pollution: Governments and cities have to do more, agreed the participants of the international conference
https://english.arnika.org/press-releases/ostrava-declaration-calls-for-clean-air
The four-day international conference ‘Fighting Air Pollution in the Industrial Cities of Europe’, organized by Arnika Association from the Czech Republic, was held in Ostrava. The adopted declaration appeals to intergovernmental organizations, the governments and public authorities of Europe and former Soviet Union countries to take actions in solving air pollution, one of the great existential challenges of humankind killing 4.5 million people every year.
The Ostrava Conference hosted environmentalists, politicians, medical experts, state officials, lawyers and activists from Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Poland and Ukraine.
“We, the participants of the international conference (...), recognize the importance of the air pollution in our region for the environment and human health of current, but also future generations,” states the document formulating essential conditions for improving the situation throughout the region (1).
“In many countries, citizens don’t get the right information about the state of the environment. Often, the air pollution level is not measured reliably,” explains Martin Skalský, Chairman of Arnika Association, organizer of the conference. “The problem is also the enforceability of law, corruption, dysfunctional state administration, the lack of interest of politicians, or too much influence of industry. Arnika wants to share the experience the Czech Republic has undergone over the past three decades with the civic activists in countries where the situation is more complex in many ways. Pollution is borderless. Solving global environmental problems is not possible without international cooperation,” Skalský adds.
The Ostrava Declaration emphasizes crucial problems and urges the governments to deal with them: reliable measuring systems of the air quality, public access to such data, implementation of the EU standards to reduce the pollution, public participation in decision-making and enforcement of the law. No public funding should be approved to environmentally harmful industries. The document also calls to avoid using double standards of the multinational corporations in different parts of the world, such as the steel giant ArcelorMittal operating in six out of eight countries represented at the conference. (2)
The document also appeals to the organizations and citizens of the region. “We urge the civil society organizations to pay attention to the topic of air pollution, enforce the access to information and public participation in decision making on the topic, ”Tamara Kharchylava, a lawyer from Kyiv based NGO Ecoaction concludes. Participants also expressed their concerns over increasing number of harassment of environmental activists.
Disregarded countries?
The city council member of Mariupol, Ukraine, Maksym Borodin reminds that “in spite of arriving from different cities, regions and countries, we have many things in common regarding the air pollution.” (3)
As the conference presentations and debates showed, multinational corporations often apply double standards in different countries abusing weak environmental standards in the non-EU countries.
“There is no second-rate world, second-rate nations or second-rate people,” stated Samir Lemeš, a Bosnian-Herzegovinian environmentalist. “We all should have the same rights and one of them is the right for healthy and non-toxic air to breathe,”president of the Eko Forum Zenica civic association adds.
Stories heard in Ostrava
The participants of the international meeting saw, among others, a presentation from northern Armenia, where the factory bursts the smoke on the UNESCO-listed medieval monasteries. This year once again, the inhabitants of Karaganda, Kazakhstan, witnessed black snow from the ArcelorMittal Temirtau steel mill. Participants from Ukraine described the life in shadows of one of Europe's dirtiest steelworks located in the industrial cities in the Eastern part of the country.
Participants also shared successful examples of grassroot campaigns in Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic, where the pressure from civil societies made significant environmental improvement possible together with an active approach of the public authorities and strict requirements of the European Union. Although the Ostrava region is still one of the most polluted in the EU, the emissions from local metallurgical enterprises have dropped to a half thanks to demands of inhabitants. (4)
“The active approach and wide interest of the citizens in public affairs are crucial here, we need people’s support to be able to help them,” explains Dimitriy Kalmykov, the director of Karaganda EcoMuseum, Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, in many cities, the inhabitants are unaware of the hazardous health threat floating over their heads.