Conference summary: 'Towards Sustainable European Infrastructure': Dubrovnik, 22-24 October, 2009
By Kruno Kartus, Croatian Environmental Press Centre
Croatia plans to include almost half of its land area and more than a third of its coastal waters in Natura 2000, a Europe-wide network of natural protected sites. Unfortunately, the country's newly proposed Energy Strategy envisages the construction of new facilities that fail to utilise renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and consumption reduction in effective ways.
When it joins the European Union, with 44.83 percent of land area and 38.97 percent of coastal waters included in the Natura 2000 network, Croatia will have the highest land percentage under conservation of all EU member states. However, can this ambitious plan - proposed by the State Institute for Nature Protection - survive the construction of new transport routes and energy capacities, while preserving animals and wildlife habitats amidst asphalting, construction, excavation and fragmentation?
It's not an easy task. For example, WWF, Greenpeace, Birdlife, Bankwatch and other NGOs recently took Poland's government to the European Court of Justice in an effort stop highway construction through the large Biebrzu wetlands and the Augustow rainforest. The 'Green Lung of Poland' campaign, which included petitions, protests and court complaints, lasted since 1999 to 2007, though NGOs report that precious nature reserves continue to be devastated, despite a rerouting of the highway.
This very issue was addressed in October at the 'Towards Sustainable European Infrastructures' conference, held in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Helen Byron, senior international site caseworker for Birdlife, said that all of Europe's future infrastructural projects will have to respect the existence of "green infrastructure."
Birdlife's research results show that construction of new transport routes and energy capacities could jeopardise 379 sites of community interest (SCIs), or 8 percent of all SCIs in the Natura network, as well as special protected areas (SPA), 4.4 percent of all of the network's SPAs, Byron explained.
Within the framework of the Dubrovnik conference, DG Environment Representative Marco Fritz announced at a 'Green Networks' workshop that the EU is working on a plan to reinforce compatibility of regional and territorial development with biodiversity. Fritz expressed hope that the EU's Cohesion and Structural Funds will strengthen biodiversity efforts in relevant plans, programmes and strategic environmental assessments (SEAs).
Green infrastructure consists of natural and man-made elements, such as reforestation zones, green bridges, green urban areas, and high natural-value farmland or forest areas, Fritz explained during a speech in which he introduced the Green Infrastructure Europe website. Structures need to be integrated with decisions on land use planning, but current EU biodiversity policy does not provide tools for the delivery of such a mechanism, he concluded.
The Dubrovnik conference, organised by the Croatian Council on Sustainable Development and Environmental Protection in cooperation with German Environmental Council, brought together 70 national council-members from all parts of Europe, in addition to 40 external participants.
One of the event's more exciting moments was the introduction of the Mediterranean Solar Plan, or MSP, the result of support from the Mediterranean Union. According to Filipe Duarte Santos from the University of Lisbon, the MSP will develop new capacity for 20 gigawatts of electricity, and will connect Africa and Europe. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has carried out research showing that just 0.3 percent of total desert area in North Africa and the Middle East can provide enough energy and desalinised water to meet the needs of both continents. According to the DLR, one square kilometre of desert is sufficient to supply approximately 100,000 households with 250 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year; it adds that more than 15 percent of Europe's electricity requirements could be produced from concentrated solar power systems by 2050. In turn for solar energy, Africa would receive investment, jobs, energy and desalinised seawater.
The MSP project was launched by 60 scientists, with supporting efforts from Jordanian Prince Hassan bin Talal and the Roman Club. Also, French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel supported the Mediterranean Union's adoption of the MSP concept within the DESERTEC framework.
Advisors to European ministers of environment heard the following about MSP from Olav Hohmeyer from the German Council for Environment: "The warmest 12 years since 1850 to date have occurred since 1990. If the temperature in Greenland increases by only three degrees Celsius all island ice will melt, which means raising the global sea by seven metres. If we are looking for a sustainable energy then it is not nuclear because the disposal of waste generated in nuclear plants is not secure. Also, without a global spread of massive application of nuclear power it cannot achieve a significant breakthrough in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. [Such a scenario], however, is unacceptable because it raises the issue of terrorism, and terrorists who would easier seize nuclear material when it was present at every step. Compared to such unsustainable ideas, Earth receives 10,000 times more energy from the sun than the total energy consumption on the planet."
The Dubrovnik conference also addressed the issue ballast water requirements for tankers as posing a major threat to the Adriatic Sea. Only the southern Adriatic is deep enough to accommodate tanker ballast, warned Maja Markovcic Kostelac, head of the Department of Maritime Transport at the Croatian Ministry of Sea. Damir Zec of the Maritime Faculty in Rijeka claimed that 1,426 big vessels have been tracked in the Adriatic just since September 2008. Of this amount, 20 percent were tankers carrying oil, chemicals or gas. Zec and Nenad Smodlaka from the Center for Marine Research in Rovinj presented case scenarios such as sinking, fire, collision and other accidents which are especially problematic because of Croatia's extremely variegated coastline. If there was a tanker collision near the Istrian coast, 6,000 tons of oil would end up on eastern coast of Istria and the western shores of the island of Cres within 16 hours - a scenario that was demonstrated with graphic simulations. Kostelac pointed out that ballast water dumping has brought another threat to the Adriatic: the introduction of aggressive, alien algae types Caulerpa taxifolia and Caulerpa racemosa.
The German Council for the Environment (SRU) issued a press release saying that sustainable development of the European Union, as well as specific objectives such as preventing a rise two degrees Celsius rise in global temperature by 2020 is possible only with sustainable energy infrastructure. The SRU claimed that renewables can become a major energy resource by the middle of this century, and that it is therefore important to start building trans-European energy pathways. This means, for example, connecting wind-farm capacities in the north and solar facilities in the south. Germany has already proved to be a country of environmental visionaries, and introduced an ecological tax in the 1990s, which has not only reduced pollution but has employed upwards of 300,000 people, said Angelika Zahrnt. She emphasised the important role of NGOs in achieving positive change As long year president of the Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) made direct impact on sustainable path of the German economy and as honour she is a winner of the German Environmental Award for 2009.
