UNMIK/FR/011/01
FEATURE RELEASE - 2 February, 2001

Opinion
Clean up projects: will they ever work?

Kosovo, we should face up to it, is polluted. 

Any realistic painting would depict fields of plastic bags seemingly growing out the vegetation beneath, mountainside garbage slides and roadside displays of waste ranging from cola cans to abandoned cars. The smell, repulsive to humans, attracts dogs, birds and rats. Often set alight, household garbage fumes gently dose the population, from infants to the elderly, with a variety of poisons.

The picture is not a pretty one. Nor is its subject, Kosovo's towns and villages, a pleasant and safe place for people to live.

But why is everywhere so dirty, and what can be done about it? UNMIK, the JIAS Department of Environment, together with numerous local and international NGOs, are trying to clean up. But without cooperation from the public, their efforts will likely be in vain.

Explanations for the trash situation vary: the legacy of a socialist state ('if it belongs to the state-let the state keep it clean'); too few collection and disposal sites; too little enforcement of environmental laws; internally displaced people not considering their temporary accommodations as their own, hence not caring about the environment there.

UNMIK officials are the first to admit that environmental concerns were not top priority when the mission arrived in early summer 1999.  Filling basic human needs and ensuring human rights took precedence. Today, as Kosovo readies itself for association with the rest of Europe, environmental matters get more attention. And although large-scale projects to cut industrial pollution offer little scope for public participation, others, such as clearing rubbish from parks, reducing the waste of natural resources and just generally cleaning up Kosovo, are projects that Kosovars, young and old, can contribute to.

Over the past year, the European Union, KFOR and numerous NGOs have initiated many environmental clean-up projects throughout Kosovo. A few succeeded, many did not.
The reason why some had little permanent impact was that there were always a few who cared little for the environment. Their behaviour  destroyed the good work done by others.

Take the municipal park in downtown Vushtrri. One donor country, the United Arab Emirates, allocated DM 165,000 last year to clean up and renovate the site of an old park. Seeking to recreate it  as a place for the people of Vushtrri to enjoy, the project cleared away rubbish, undertook landscaping, laid out walkways, provided benches for people to sit, built a playground for Vushtrii's children, installed a fountain and public toilets, and placed trash bins conveniently throughout the area. Former SRSG Dr. Bernard Kouchner's officially opened it together with UAE KFOR.

But already by the end of that first day, rubbish was strewn throughout the site. High school students made the park their hangout, leaving their packing and cans behind after eating and drinking. By the end of the year, the municipality decided to close it down altogether. By then vandals had ad ripped out the benches and trash bins, set fire to buildings and laid waste everything else that once made the park a pleasant place: hardly an encouragement for other donors.

So why did the Vushtrri project not work? The Director of Vushtrri's Department of Agriculture in Vushtrri, Zenel Bunjaku, blames the lack of regulations and/or their enforcement. Without fining perpetrators, he feels, people will not take responsibility for their actions. On top of that, the park was not properly guarded, Bunjaku observed.

But is that really an excuse? UNMIK Municipal Administrators elsewhere tell similar stories about their park and river clean up projects. People do not destroy unprotected parks in other parts of Europe.  In Vushtrri's case, the vandalism was probably carried out by only a handful of people, Bunjaku thinks. In addition, there is the universal excuse: "This is the Balkans, there is no tradition in keeping good parks!" Invalid, of course, unless the Balkans are redefined to exclude Bulgaria, Croatia, FYROM, Greece and Slovenia.

No one was more disappointed by what happened at the park than the UAE's Lt. Col. Abdulla, who oversaw the Vushtrri project. "When people are just given things, they do not appreciate them," he ventures. "They have to be made to work and feel what they have." The idea of "ownership" of environmental clean-up is so essential, in fact, in future the UAE will no longer initiate projects where the people aren't doing most of the work. "We'll give them plans and materials, but we won't build-and, if we aren't happy with what they are doing, we will withdraw our support and let them do it themselves."

Abdulla says that if people really want to do something, the UAE will help. But after the Vushtrri park episode, his people are quite discouraged. He agrees that education must be the first step, and for springtime the UAE is planning to sponsor a "keep your school clean" competition in Vushtrri. But Abdulla concurs with Zenel Bunjaku: violators will only learn when they are fined-or made to do community service for illegal dumping or vandalism.

Shefqet Pecanin, the local Co-Head of the JIAS Department of Environment, agrees that a carrot and stick approach is needed. His Department is presently implementing a DM 500,000 public awareness programme. But until people are forced to pay money for committing environmental offences, the Environment Department feels it can only bark-without any accompanying bite.  The Department, together with the Department of Education, the international NGO Balkan Sunflowers, UNICEF and the local NGO OXO, is doing its best to raise awareness through schoolchildren first-pointing out the health risks to children themselves from playing amid waste, as well as that for all people from things like burning garbage and building in designated green areas.  "The economic benefits over the long-term must be highlighted as well," Pecanin says.

The best way to ensure success for an environmental project, Pecanin feels, is for it to be initiated locally, with funds raised from local residents. His logic: if neighbours fund and participate in a project, they will act in a more unified way to ensure that a few bad apples don't ruin the work the majority want done.

 "If we don't all work together on environmental protection-we'll be in deep trouble," Mr Pecanin reminds us.
In summary, the new-found freedom to walk freely through the environment does not entail the freedom to destroy it.  On the contrary, it carries the obligation to preserve the environment-for ourselves and our neighbours in our generation, and for our children and the generations that follow them.

Contact: D. Kahrmann
(038) 504 604 Ext. 55589
E-mail: kahrmann@un.org