"Belovezhskaya Pushcha Management Plan fenced with barbed wire"
By Galina Kholodok, Website "Support to the capacity building and networking of Belarusian Non Governmental Organizations and Local Authorities", December 31, 2008
That is what Valery Dranchuk, author of Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Resolution SOS and head of the TERRA Convention Environmental Public Group, concluded upon his pre-Christmas visit to the national park. He said the reason for going to the Pushcha this time was an abridged version of the Plan posted on the Internet that concerned members of the public still cannot read in full. “I got a copy secondhand quite recently, and in order to begin making comments or proposals, I went to the Pushcha with the specific purpose of obtaining a draft copy of the Plan there and using that chance to talk to the actual designers of the ancient forest’s conservation prospects,” said Dranchuk. “That is a guarantee I have under the Aarhus convention on public access to environmental information and my right as a journalist who continuously writes about changes for the better at Belovezhskaya Pushcha.”
European Diploma yet not to be confirmed
Dranchuk said it was no mere chance that the Council of Europe requested to see the Belovezhskaya Pushcha long-term management prospects and goals in the form of the Plan this year. “No one could be happy with that so-called “reserved area,” except maybe for the presidential property management department itself, so it can continue to commercialize and appropriate the national nature assets and world heritage,” he said. It was the absence of a timeline that was regarded as Belarus’ failure to do its homework and cost the Pushcha forest managers its special European Diploma on which Belovezhskaya Pushcha had prided itself since 1997. The Diploma was not confirmed for a third term pending preparation of a full-fledged management plan.
Rumors about the Plan as a product of Belarusian researchers and an attempt at revising the Pushcha management model have been around since spring. However, access to the Plan for public discussion has been completely blocked, Dranchuk said, adding that the national park management’s conduct has clearly fallen short of the declared progressive “vision and long-term goals” of the document. “I was not even admitted to the research department. They said a meeting with a journalist was only possible with the permission of General Director Nikolai Bambiza who was not in the office at that time. When I requested to copy the Plan to my personal flash memory card, Deputy Director Research Dmitry Bernatsky said the department did not have it at all. Meanwhile, Dmitry Bernatsky is known to have both participated in the preparation of the Plan and visited Strasbourg to defend the first version.”
The Pushcha climate: intolerance to opponents
Valery Dranchuk said another precursor to the Council of Europe’s decision to suspend the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Diploma was TERRA Convention’s clearly expressed civil stance which it had communicated to Strasbourg on numerous occasions. Valery sent a personal letter of protest to Strasbourg around the end of 2007, just as another hearing on the matter was about to begin. “It was me who was subjected to repression and premeditated persecution by the Pushcha management during my visits to the national park and I had to write about that in person. That was followed by our collective letter.”
However, a year passed, with hardly any change at all, said Dranchuk. The Pushcha climate has remained the same: intolerance to opponents, disregard of the Aarhus requirements for public access to environmental information, and administrative dictatorship by the general director. One of the most striking examples of that is the disdainful treatment of activists’ requests to take part in the preparation in the Management Plan. Participation of concerned members of the public was one of the conditions stipulated by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, the founder of the Diploma. The park management failed to respond to the collective letter by Valery Dranchuk, Inna Zenina, Victor Bakharov, Heorhi Kazulka, Mikhail Kozel and thus ultimately stopped its dialog with the opponents who had urged drastic change at Belovezhskaya Pushcha for years and expressed a wish to take part in the blueprinting of the park’s future. On June 24, Heorhi Kazulka, Doctor of Biology, an author of the letter, who resides in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha area, was expelled from the room where a meeting held by the national park’s management to discuss the Management Plan was taking place, as a person who was undesired by, and out of favor with, those who organized the so-called “dialog” – primarily so for General Director Nikolai Bambiza.
Civil observers were not invited to Strasbourg
Meanwhile, according to Valery Dranchuk, the national park’s management has a well-tested mechanism in place. “The declarations for Europe that the Belarusian officials have been taking there are sometimes a substantial misstatement of the actual situation, to say the least. Besides, their visits are not commented on after come back. And we cannot find out what they discussed in Strasbourg, so that we can monitor the government’s actions and take advantage of the situation to make an improvement in the Pushcha.” Today, says the independent expert, things might get moving and policy on the Belovezhskaya Pushcha might change. “There is slight hope of a real reserve status, something that generations of the park’s defenders – from academy researchers to the third sector – have tried to achieve. However, there is a risk that this is yet another trick by the Belarusian government or those businessmen who hold government carte blanche and continue to rob the forest. I strongly sensed that their priority now is to do anything they can to get back the Diploma – for ten years now, not five as before. They need to have it back to avoid disgracing themselves on the so-called 600th anniversary of the reserve conditions in the forest, while keeping the chance to continue managing it as they did before. The Euro Diploma lever can only work if the public starts pushing for the current declarations to become public.”
Research in an industrial park zone
When Valery Dranchuk faced an administrative prohibition to enter the research department, he came up with a no less creative alternative, i.e. taking a photographic trip around the concrete wall that encloses the industrial park of with a camera (see the images). The GPU is the shortened Russian name of the State Environmental Protection Institution, the official designation of the national park, that is strongly reminiscent of the Main Political Directorate, the Soviet secret police of the 1920’s and 20’s. “And that wall, and the barbed wire on top only added to associations with the repulsive Stalin-era abbreviation,” Dranchuk confessed. “I still find it hard to believe that place behind the barbed wire for many a year has been the location of the “national park’s” research department…
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