Belarus: Wasteland for Environmental NGOs

Persecution of activists and an information vacuum. How does the environmental movement survive?

Polina Druzhnaya, an expert in waste management, had to leave Belarus for Lithuania in September 2023.

“I hardly ever give interviews to the media, as I haven’t yet figured out what is dangerous to talk about and what is not,” she said. “I still have relatives in Belarus, and I’m worried about them.” (Her name and those of other sources have been changed to protect their identities.)

The government ordered the closure of all environmental NGOs in 2021, amid the heavy crackdown on anyone considered a threat to the regime that was sparked by nationwide protests against the disputed presidential election in 2020.

Yet activists both inside the country and some of the many who sought safety abroad say persecution of environmentalists continues. Alongside official fear tactics, the government restricts access to what limited information exists about the state of the environment.

“It has become unsafe for active citizens to deal with environmental issues – this kind of activity will immediately attract the attention of the power structures,” Polina says.

“Nowadays the situation in Belarus is so complicated that it is impossible even to organize local cleanup days around apartment buildings or in parks. The authorities consider any activity, unless specially authorized, as dangerous and suppress it at the root.”

Conditions for monitoring civil society have also deteriorated, according to the Netherlands-based European Center for Not-for-Profit Law Stichting (ECNL).

“Many CSOs deliberately carry out their activities covertly or latently, without highlighting their activities online or in the media,” the ECNL wrote in its 2022 report on Belarus.

No Information – No Problems?

Mark Zarechny, a Belarusian specialist in the conservation of water resources, believes that the country has good domestic legislation on environmental protection and the state monitoring system works to some extent. The problem is a lack of publicly available information.

“Previously, the results of environmental monitoring were posted by the relevant state bodies on their websites,” he said, but now little official information is available online.

The authorities continue to compile a register of environmental activities carried out by state and local authorities. However, Zarechny says, “starting from 2022, almost any information from this list can be obtained only upon request” – even though the register doubled in size that year, to 546 pages, as new bodies were added.

Some information, such as that on environmental monitoring conducted at the country’s sole nuclear power plant, in Astravets, is labeled “not for public access.”

Even access to information on the spread of invasive plant species in Belarus is now restricted – not to mention data on water and air-quality control in the vicinity of state enterprises, large state farms, and much else.

Dodgy Data

At her previous job with an environmental NGO in Belarus, Druzhnaya advised commercial companies, including IT firms and petrol stations, on separating their waste, and led classes to raise environmental awareness.

Several years ago, she said, businesses largely viewed showing their environmental awareness as a part of their marketing strategy. The current economic recession has, however, forced them to cut costs, starting with PR.

And for the state the environment has never been a priority. Official bodies showed interest and cooperated with NGOs only as long as the European Union financed various environmental projects, she says.

In one instance, after injecting 14.5 million euros into an air-quality monitoring project, the EU suspended the program in response to the closure of NGOs, people familiar with the matter say.

The authorities have not closed off access to all kinds of environmental information. For example, quarterly data on the state of the water, air, and soil, and on radiation in major cities is made available by the Natural Resources Ministry’s center for meteorology, radioactive pollution control, and environmental monitoring.

Another environmentalist, still living in Belarus, believes that the real state of the environment can still be hidden from the public, both in official reports and when individuals send soil or water samples for testing.

If a lab detects excessive levels of pollutants in a sample, an individual can then appeal for an official response – something public bodies may be reluctant to do, the activist speculates, even to the point of instructing testing labs to release false figures to avoid a public outcry.

Zarechny describes another bug in the system that may permit officials to paint a rosier picture of environmental conditions in their reports.

Monitoring in Belarus is based only on chemical indicators, while biological indicators are not measured, he says, taking the example of a discharge of pollutants into a river:

“After a day, the chemical analysis of water will show nothing – the river will wash everything away. The impact of the discharge can be determined by the depressed state of the river’s flora and fauna, but Belarus does not take such indicators into account.”

Work was underway in 2019 and 2020 to bring Belarusian environmental legislation closer to EU standards, including the mandatory use of biological indicators, Zarechny says, but this came to an end after 2021.

There is another reason why the environmental situation in Belarus looks quite favorable on paper. Druzhnaya explains that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection informs officials of what indicators to use when monitoring the rise or fall of pollutant emissions. And just as when Belarus was a Soviet republic, officials often manipulate the actual data, “adjusting” them to the plan.

Indeed, official data for some indicators takes an oddly straight line showing year-on-year improvements:

Emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere in the Republic of Belarus
(thousand tons)

Despite the restrictions on public access to much of the economic data, some environmental indicators appear to indicate a significant economic decline. Druzhnaya gives an example:

The official figure for the amount of industrial waste produced in 2022 fell sharply. Apparently, she conjectures, the Natural Resources Ministry saw this as a positive change.

But rather than industry being less wasteful, the decline is most likely due to falling industrial production, according to Druzhnaya, who says, “Our state has never had a clear waste management policy, and it still doesn’t.”

Another set of official figures hints at this. The National Statistics Committee’s industrial data report gives industrial production values only at current, inflation-affected prices, which show the value of industrial output rising in 2022 compared to the previous year. However, the table in the report shows the volume of production down by 5.4% after rising or holding steady since 2018. This drop is likely due to Western sanctions and the loss of many European markets.

Avoiding International Scrutiny

In 2001, Belarus joined the Aarhus Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters.

Over the years, Belarusian authorities have claimed that they were fulfilling their obligations. Yet environmental activists say that progress in achieving the goals of the convention was largely down to their efforts rather than official policy.

Access to justice in environmental matters was particularly problematic. According to Zarechny, in a very few cases, individuals won court cases against violators of environmental legislation, but only in the period from 2015 to 2020. No such cases have reached the courts since 2020.

Belarus withdrew from the convention in 2022, after criticism from the other 46 member states over the persecution of eco-activists and closure of environmental NGOs.

Minsk’s withdrawal from the convention “does not mean that the domestic Belarusian environmental legislation will cease to apply,” Zarechny comments. Now, however, there is no external monitoring of the government’s steps toward cleaning up the environment.

“Society has practically no levers left to put pressure on the authorities when it comes to environmental decisions: information about the state of the environment is restricted, there is no justice, and any protests are dispersed by the police,” he says.

Official bodies continue to call public hearings to present the results of environmental impact assessments of construction projects. But, Zarechny continues, “99% of ordinary people are not interested in this and do not know about the hearings.”

Activists Who Cross Border Run Risks

Inna Turova, an eco-activist who left Belarus in 2021 – one of hundreds of civil society workers who have sought safety abroad – now helps run a training course on sustainable development goals (SDGs) organized by a German institution.

“I am responsible for recruiting candidates from Belarus to participate in our projects. Unfortunately, recently the number of applications from Belarus has significantly decreased,” the activist says.

“Participation of activists in EU programs, even environmental ones, can attract the attention of law enforcement agencies,” the activist continues.

“People do not want to take risks.”

Science communicator Ira Ponedelnik (her real name) had to leave Belarus in 2020. She now works with the n-ost Network for Border Crossing Journalism to help develop climate journalism in Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

“Only a few journalists still in Belarus are ready to work on environmental topics,” she says. “Writing the truth about ecology in our country is possible only for media outlets whose editorial offices have moved abroad. In Belarus such media are considered as extremist, and working for them is a big risk for journalists.”

“When Change Comes …”

How do environmental activists carry out their activities in conditions of limited access to information, lack of independent statistics, and persecution? And is there still environmental activism in Belarus?

Ivan Bogdanovich, a former employee at a Belarusian environmental NGO, is one of those who has decided to stay in the country.

“The environmental organization I worked for was closed by the authorities, but it was quite well known for its activities in Belarus,” he says.

“People turned to us for help, and even now they remember the contact details of our specialists and write to us with requests for advice and information. Many activists have found new jobs in other spheres after the NGO closed down, but they have not lost interest in ecology, and they are ready to help people for free, on a volunteer basis.”

Even then, experts can offer their knowledge only on neutral topics, such as separate waste collection or disposal of hazardous substances. No expert dares comment on the Astravets nuclear power plant for fear of putting themselves or others at risk, Bogdanovich says.

For this activist, the task at hand for those who remain in Belarus is to accumulate knowledge for the future. After all, he says, while everything is frozen in Belarus, the rest of the world keeps moving forward.

“The world is developing, and eco-activists should keep up,” he says, “so that later, when changes occur in Belarus, they will be ready to spring into action and give real help to nature and people.”

…

The author is a Belarusian journalist who wishes to remain anonymous for reasons of safety.

This article was produced with the support of the International Visegrad Fund.