Let us remind you that the dead Borska river, the poisoned Pek river flows through the country of Serbia, along the Danube-Tisa-Danube canal, the number of deadly malignant diseases is higher than average. And islands of plastic float along the Drina and Lima rivers. Toxic sludge settles near Đerdap. Wastewater and feces flow from Belgrade into the Sava and Danube.
It is our carelessness that kills us
Tens of thousands of people pay with their heads for high air pollution every year. In Kraljevo and Užice, it is the cause of every fifth death. Therefore, every year, an invisible "corona epidemic" occurs in Serbia, more deadly than the current one. Those are the facts. Any help? From Russia - to replace tailings-like lignite and wet twigs in individual furnaces with gas? From China, to build a wastewater treatment system in Belgrade, while in Smederevo and Bor their chimneys spew death? From the European Union, from which Serbia is zenically moving away while getting closer to it?
For now, there is little progress on Chapter 27, which is one of the most demanding because it deals with the environment and climate change. The declarative adoption of European standards and their transposition into domestic legislation on the way to alleged EU accession have not been too much of a problem until now. The problem is the path from paper to reality.
The impossibility of everything written in this chapter will be more visible to Brussels very quickly than in other areas. Does anyone really think that the government, with a man at the head who violates his own Constitution on a daily basis, will really adhere to the set of norms taken over from Brussels, and will quickly and decisively transform Serbia from a wild landfill into an ecologically sound country? The problem is further exacerbated by the bleak starting position from which the ecological revival should begin. Rarely has a country experienced such comprehensive environmental devastation.
The right to healthy air
Serbia is a country that climbs to the very top of the world in terms of air pollution in autumn and stays there with a few breaks until the end of the heating season. Instead of this being an occasion for a national environmental awakening, the reason for the government, together with citizens' associations and civil society organizations, as well as experts, to urgently work out binding methods of getting out of the doldrums, it all boils down to tried and tested demagoguery. The objectivity of the world's pollution meters and their "domestic helpers" is usually questioned. As if things would be much better if, for example, Belgrade was ranked eleventh, and not first, in the world in terms of the poisoning of what children in the city inhale. Denial, relativization, faking an answer to an already relativized problem.
Nevertheless, part of the citizens know what is written in the Constitution, so when the government will not take care of "timely and complete information" about the state of the environment, then in the globalized world they collect information as they know how. Serbia's green awakening is inconvenient for official Belgrade, which seems to believe in the "comparative advantage of poverty" and persistently attracts dirty investors. Taking care of the environment is, according to the official interpretation, a "luxury problem", a sign that people are doing better economically, so they are poisoning the environment from their heels. That ignorant philosophy of government will, by the nature of things, bring many interesting green days of insurrection.
The right to healthy water
Two thirds of citizens drink "acceptable" tap water. Formulated differently - every third citizen endangers his own health if he consumes "chesmovača". It is of alarming quality for every fifth settlement in Serbia. Vojvodina is leading in this.
The United Nations estimates that due to climate change in 2050, every fourth inhabitant of the planet will not have access to drinking water. And the UN General Assembly passed a resolution in 2010 declaring the right to drinking water a basic human right. This resolution should bind Serbia at least as much as resolution number 1244. This means that the state is obliged to protect the right to access to drinking water. This right has been severely violated in Zrenjanin since 2004.
It should be noted that due to the negligence already described, Serbia dropped its watercourses into the second and third of the four categories. In addition, smaller watercourses are not included in the analysis at all, so their status is unknown. In the first, the best category, there are mostly upper, mountain courses of streams and rivers. Investors close to the government are happy to stuff them in the pipes. It is no wonder that the resistance started at Stara Planina. People have realized that the future thirst of children is in the hands of unscrupulous private individuals, so they refuse to let the government take them across the water.
The right to healthy food
Can the soil, irrigated with impure waters, above which lignite dust floats, be good enough for our children to eat their fruits and vegetables grown on it without fear? What grows on degraded land?
Slightly less than two thirds of households in Serbia are connected to the public sewage network. Those remaining millions make do as they arrive, because necessity is necessity. And only ten percent of wastewater from households and 37 percent from industry in Serbia is treated. We have already mentioned that Serbia has the most polluted river in Europe, and the only capital that discharges all its waste water and feces into rivers. Tens of tons of zinc, copper, chromium, arsenic, lead and nickel are flowing into waterways. The result is - heavy metal fish. And we really like to eat river fish.
Do we ever wonder what is used to irrigate fields near polluted rivers?
In bureaucratic language, it is said that "the problem is recognized". A series of Government papers very cleverly breaks down this matter analytically. There are quite specific laws. But they don't apply. Because it is "expensive". Admittedly, the problem has been remedied in some places, such as in Subotica. Belgrade is working on it. Still, we'll be waiting another decade or two for sustained improvement. Serbia has promised that by 2040, all settlements with more than two thousand inhabitants will treat wastewater.
The fact that today it is "cheaper" for us to defecate directly into rivers, to throw refrigerators and tires into them, and to poison them with chemicals, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will pay a much higher price. They will have every right to call us by our real name - "assholes".
Biodiversity and Rio Tinto
Science says that an ecological disturbance occurs when the environment begins to have a negative effect on the survival of living species or a certain population. In Serbia, we are mostly recorders of environmental disturbances - which we caused, or did not prevent. We know from various red books that have been officially written since 1999 that in Serbia "four endemic plant taxa" have been irreversibly deleted from the world gene pool, and that five percent of the total flora is threatened. We know that we will never see a specimen of a forest butterfly again in Serbia, we put it to rest, 14 species of birds no longer nest in this country, tens of species of feathered friends could follow their example. But that's not our problem, until our faucet turns yellow, or our child gets asthma, right?
The government is happy to invite the giant Rio Tinto to the local forests, meadows and rivers such as the Jadar. This is the same mining concern that wanted to destroy unions in its Australian plants in the 2008s. The one whose copper mine in Papua New Guinea was the subject of a conflict that ended in a civil war. In 46, Norway sold all its shares in this concern because, according to Oslo, it participates in causing serious damage to the environment. It's the same Rio Tinto that last May put dynamite under the 000-year-old Aboriginal cult sites in Australia and blew them up. Newcastle University professor Peter Stone called it one of the "worst destructions of cultural property in recent times". It is, therefore, a concern that will be remembered in a barbaric society with the Taliban who destroyed Buddha statues or members of the "Islamic State" who destroyed ancient Palmyra.
Such a wonderful guest is warmly welcomed by official Serbia. Of course, he will have to "obey all environmental protection regulations." Just as much as the current president of Serbia understands and respects them.
Resistance is growing. From Stara planina, Parkić na Banovo Brdo, Košutnjak, to Jadro. It is no longer a "luxury" issue. It is a matter of health and survival.
I understand the fear of environmental activists that their politicians will pollute the cause they are fighting for. Too often citizens were deceived. The right to a healthy environment must not be a partisan issue. But it - regardless of the disgust caused by dirty politics - is already a first-rate political issue.
Bonus video:
