4 The development of the environmental non-governmental movement in Slovakia
The Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Conservationists
Introduction
The history of the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Conservationists (SZOPK), because it spans the communist and post-communist periods, illustrates some common problems affecting social organisations, and particularly non-governmental organisations (NGOs), faced with the collapse of one set of macro-social institutions and the need to reintegrate into the qualitatively different institutional environment which is slowly emerging from the ruins of communism. Such a process of re-adaptation throws up a series of dichotomous choices for collective social actors: continuity versus discontinuity; autonomy versus greater institutionalis¬ation; centralisation versus decentralisation; ‘big’ versus ‘small-scale’ politics. Organisational traditions are important here, as are the new opportunities and constraints imposed by new political, social and economic conditions, especially new opportunities for NGOs to fulfil an information-generating function and thereby contribute to the governance and self-governance of society. A hitherto unthinkable degree of self-determination and self-reflection is apparent — and arguably necessary — if an existing organisation is to survive or a new one establish itself. Organisations are ultimately accountable to their members or adherents, legitimised and reproduced insofar as experiences of belonging, participation, solidarity or empowerment are valued by a critical mass of individuals involved in the life of the organisation. In a real sense the internal transformation of SZOPK therefore represents a test-case for the success of the ‘great transformation’ of post-communist societies, a measure, above all, of its participativeness — whether and how it is ‘lived out’ by grassroots actors; and whether social movements are on the one hand accepted as legitimate players in political decision-making and on the other hand able to establish a creative balance between utilising institutional channels of influence and reproducing ‘alternative’ identities.
Historical background
From its establishment in 1969 up to the start of the 1980s SZOPK was the only environmental NGO operating in Slovakia.1 With around 3,000 members it remains the largest. Indeed its significance extends beyond questions of age and size — it developed into a movement which had a significant impact upon the pre-history and the very course of the Slovak ‘velvet revolution’ and continued to be almost synonymous, in the public mind, with Slovak environmentalism or conservationism in the first years thereafter.
In the early 1970s SZOPK's agenda had been apolitical, and its membership consisted of a small number of enthusiasts — partly conservationist-romantics, partly artists, partly specialists from the fields of both conservation and cultural heritage (such as museum curators). An important landmark for the organisation was its third congress in 1975, when one of the leading figures of Czechoslovak geography, the ambitious Professor Emil Mazúr, became chairman. He had a strong position in the academic and political worlds, while the newly elected secretary, the young Andrej Fedorko was a highly capable manager as well as a ‘manipulator’. Together they imprinted on the organisation a mode of operation which characterised its life up to the autumn of 1989. The organisation had a relatively liberal character in comparison with similar organisations under strict control of the regime. Nonetheless it had a typically centralistic, rigid, vertical pyramidal structure, in which central directives predominated and any form of independence — especially any activity which contradicted the central party line — was prevented or penalised. With only a few exceptions members of the core leadership were members of the Communist Party. In terms of organisation, the model of governance developed within SZOPK rested on a network of district committees and local organisations (ZO) covering practically the whole territory of Slovakia. These were effectively subject to surveillance or control by the state environmental administration, by national committees (local government offices) and other state or party organisations.
Despite this structure, however, SZOPK acquired the reputation of an actively alternative, even oppositional, organisation in the years leading up to November 1989. This was partly because SZOPK, if it wanted to justify its own existence, had to carry out meaningful activity. Its main ambitions were in the fields of research, education and practical field activities. Given a reservoir of people who wished to devote their free time to nature and the environment, and given that there was no other platform for such activities, SZOPK became the ‘one-eyed king in the land of the blind’. It was attractive not only to environmentalists: having a more liberal- and independent-minded leadership than was the norm in other organisations affiliated to the National Front, and one which enjoyed relatively more freedom than, for instance, artists' unions (because the political significance of environmental issues was only belatedly appreciated), it acquired a wider significance for independent cultural and social life.
Most importantly, however, a steadily growing number of people within SZOPK became conscious of the seriousness of the depletion of the country's environment, the urgency of the threats to Slovakia's natural and cultural heritage, and the fact that there was no point in relying on anyone else to address these threats (the state environmental administration was chaotically divided among different resorts and national committees, and there was neither a Ministry of the Environment nor a law on the environment before 1989). The seeds of an emerging social movement were first apparent within the Bratislava ZO no. 6, then later within other Bratislava branches (nos 7, 13 and 16). After the publication of Bratislava/nahlas (‘Bratislava aloud’)2 their oppositional-alternative spirit spread to the organisation's Bratislava city committee, which thenceforth constituted a rival platform to the national leadership. With this organisational base the influence of SZOPK's ‘radical wing’ was discernible throughout the organisation and in wider Slovak society. The Bratislava organisation had access to the media, it organised lectures, discussion fora, cultural happenings and innumerable other activities (111 different kinds of activity were recorded in 1988–9), and was consequently far more visible to the wider public than was the SZOPK central committee.
Largely as a result of the activities of the Bratislava organisation the very term ‘conservationist’ gained a strongly positive connotation among ‘democratically’ attuned circles, becoming associated with concepts of independence, alternativeness, opposition, altruism and charity as well as with images of the Green movement abroad. Conservationists had the unanimous support of Bratislava intellectual circles. Thanks to their activity in defence of national cultural heritage sites they even enjoyed the tacit support of the nationally oriented constituency of Slovak society. Catholic dissidents appreciated the strong moral accent and the charitable activities of the conservation movement. Political opponents of the normalisation regime as well as perestroika communists expelled from the Party after 1968 expressed their sympathy, seeing in the movement a kindred spirit of opposition to the prevailing social system. Many scientists came to rely on SZOPK as a semi-independent platform for publishing ‘unfashionable’ opinions, and sociologists became interested in the organisation as an ‘island of positive deviation’. There was also support from the more independent journalists and from those public figures who had begun to predict the necessity of far-reaching social change. Last but not least among SZOPK's receptive constituencies were the thousands of people who benefited from the practical restorational work of activists in the Slovak countryside, the neglected rural communities whom conservationists sought to help.
Support multiplied after the publication of Bratislava/nahlas in 1987, and peaked during the velvet revolution of 1989, when the conservation movement supplied the lion's share of ‘revolutionaries’ and influenced the programme of Public Against Violence (VPN) as well as its non-partisan, participative, tolerant and socially regenerative spirit. The public identified conservationists as the main bearers of the revolution in Slovakia, not least because the original headquarters of VPN was the office of the Bratislava city committee of SZOPK in Markušova (now Marianska) Street. During the first post-communist months SZOPK functioned as a reservoir of people and ideas, a network and an infrastructure for the construction of a new democratic political system.
Organisational realignment: the impact of political change and international integration on the structure and strategies of the organisation
Such a position of centrality proved to be a mixed blessing for the ecological movement. For a variety of reasons significant political representation of ecologists did not translate into the effective representation of ecological issues, and paradoxically the prominence of members of SZOPK in the revolutionary events and the subsequent establishment of parliamentary democracy in Slovakia meant a loss of social capital for the organisation itself. The departure of many prominent members of the radical Bratislava branches was predictable, as this was a community which had coalesced around conservationism for a variety of reasons, of which an emerging ecological consciousness was only one. It may also have been hastened by the outcome of the SZOPK congress which took place less than a week before the velvet revolution (itself a revolutionary event in that it was run, for the first time, in accordance with democratic procedures) which produced only a stalemate in the struggle between the conservative national leadership and the Bratislava group of activists. Many of the latter therefore had little reason to remain within the organisation, or at any rate to devote much of their energy to it, when the opportunity came to participate at the centre of historic political changes. The list of leading political figures hailing from SZOPK is long: Ján Budaj — who more than anyone symbolised the initial stages of the velvet revolution in Slovakia — became the first vice-president of the Slovak parliament, Vladimír Ondruš became deputy Prime Minister, Josef Vavroušek federal Minister of the Environment, Mikuláš Huba and Peter Tatár became MPs and members of the presidium of the Slovak parliament, Juraj Flamik was executive secretary of VPN, Juraj Mesík a federal MP and president of the Green Party in Slovakia, Pavel Šremer was also a federal MP as well as advisor to President Havel and deputy Minister of the Environment.
This list illustrates the apparent strength of the institutional position which SZOPK quickly acquired: altogether the organisation supplied six members of federal or Slovak governments, fifteen MPs (mostly as candidates for either the newly established Green Party or VPN), and its members held a dominant position within the federal committee for the environment (the equivalent of a Ministry of the Environment). Members of the Union held the chairs of both the environmental and health and social affairs committees within the Slovak National Council, and were represented on the board of directors of the State Fund for Culture as well the State Fund for the Environment. At the local level, at least 300 SZOPK members were elected as councillors in the November 1990 municipal elections, including the mayor of Bratislava (Peter Kresánek). SZOPK members took up influential positions within the spheres of science, education and culture, sat on advisory councils and specialist commissions at the national and international scale, and on the editorial boards of a range of specialist and popular publications (Eugen Gindl, for example, was editor-in-chief of Verejnost', the daily newspaper published by VPN). But whether they managed to maintain and project an ecological identity in these positions is another question. In both the political sphere and the civil service, many former activists showed progressively less awareness of their environmentalist origins once installed in their new posts.
In terms of the structure of the movement, the early 1990s were characterised by further internal democratisation and a continuous differentiation process. SZOPK's internal hierarchies were dismantled or weakened, with the centre losing its directive role and taking on a coordinating function within the organisation. The union was subdivided into thirty-eight coordinating committees (thirty-six district committees and two interest-based committees, the Association of Environmental Education Centres and the Countryside Association), each of which was essentially autonomous in setting its own agenda or programme. The lowest level of aggregation then consisted of around 400 ZOs, to which individual members were directly affiliated. The executive committee of SZOPK was later accorded the de facto status of a grant commission, distributing a significant portion of SZOPK revenues in the form of project-based funding among organisational units. Within the formerly centralised organisation particular sub-groups and interests established themselves as independent or semi-independent bodies, and a substantial portion of today's ecological organisations can trace their origins to SZOPK. These include, for example, the Slovak River Network, the Society for Sustainable Living, the Society for the Protection of Birds, the Centre for the Promotion of Local Activism, the Consumers' Movement, the ‘Wolf’ Forest Protection Association, the Carpathian Conservationist Association of Altruists, the East Carpathian Association ‘Pcola’, People and Water and many others. The organisation's significance today in large part lies in this role as a breeding-ground supplying various sections of the nongovernmental sector with activists.
The remaining core of SZOPK concentrated initially on the apparently promising strategy of capitalising on its high social prestige to secure institutional influence. The Union benefited from generous state funding (and was therefore able to pay professional workers in every district in Slovakia and to set up ambitious projects, including a network of ‘eco-centres’, which necessitated the purchase of buildings and equipment). Conversely it initiated the creation of the state environmental boards and of ministries at both the Slovak and federal levels. Having successfully lobbied for a separate state environmental administration it supplied many of the personnel for its district offices.
Considerable resources were devoted to lobbying, with varying degrees of success. SZOPK attempted to apply pressure for pro-ecological amendments to the state budget and for personnel appointments within the state administration, sought to influence the legislative process (e.g. taxation law), to affect government decisions on vital issues such as the Gabcíkovo dam project and Slovakia's candidacy for the Winter Olympics, and to channel its views into important planning documents such as the Report on the state of the environment, Water management policy and the State energy policy. The latter two provided notable successes in the shape of a formal obligation on the Ministries of Agriculture and the Economy to cooperate with SZOPK in the amendment and implementation of water and energy policy. Parliamentary research teams became a useful instrument for SZOPK's lobbying campaigns, as did Ekoforum, an open discussion forum which SZOPK initiated. Prior to the 1992 parliamentary elections SZOPK sent a questionnaire to candidates for the Slovak National Council to gauge their attitudes toward the environment, a tradition which one of its ‘splinter organisations’, the Society for Sustainable Living (STUŽ/SR) has continued in subsequent elections. At the international level SZOPK delegations were received by the president and other representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, by representatives of the World Bank, by the former chair of the European Parliament, by numerous Environment and Foreign Ministers and by other politicians who took part in key international conferences on the environment in Bergen, Dobríš and Rio.
The most obvious and immediate impact of the macro-political changes on the life of a social organisation such as SZOPK was seen in the field of international relations. The period 1990-3 saw the movement develop a huge network of cooperative transnational and international ties, the density of which reflect the prestige which SZOPK acquired thanks to its role in the velvet revolution of 1989 as well as the strategic geographical location of Bratislava in a multinational border zone, which has attracted many international environmental organisations to set up regional headquarters there. Preparations for the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro came at just the right time for Slovak and other post-communist ecological organisations to tap into an emerging global environmental movement, particularly given that the first preparatory meetings took place in nearby Vienna and Budapest in March 1990. Czechoslovak preparations culminated with the hosting of the first pan-European conference of Environment Ministers at the chateau of Dobríš near Prague, the organisation of which (together with the parallel NGO summit) involved SZOPK members in a leading role. The whole preparatory process acted as an impulse for coordinated activity with other regional organisations and with government on the production of policy documents and reports. SZOPK's own ‘message for Rio’ was delivered to the general secretary of the conference and other leading figures, and a major press conference in Rio was held to highlight the specific environmental problems of Central and East European countries. The aftermath of Rio saw SZOPK organise a cycle of lectures and discussion fora to popularise the conclusions of the Earth Summit.
SZOPK, in keeping with its origins in brigade-based practical conservation, has never been a typical campaigning type of non-governmental organisation in the tradition of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. Nevertheless the first environmental campaigns after 1989 in Slovakia were initiated by SZOPK activists. Most of these were directed against plans for large-scale industrial, energy or infrastructure projects which threatened local ecosystems and which were, in most cases, ‘hangovers’ from the era of central planning. When old proposals to host the Winter Olympics in the Tatras region were revived in 1991 SZOPK set up a working group to monitor the bid process. It organised a visit to Albertville for ecologists, specialists and journalists, and in 1992 staged a conference called ‘The Winter Olympics or the sustainable development of the Tatras region’, which was designed to facilitate dialogue between representatives and citizens of the region and ecological activists.
The most far-reaching and prolonged environmental campaign in Slovakia, which has received worldwide attention, concerns the Gabcíkovo-Nagymaros dam project on the Danube. This campaign effectively began in the late 1980s when Bratislava branches of SZOPK pushed for the creation of a Danube valley national park on the basis of their own detailed project. SZOPK also published a book called Danube Story and other materials relating to the issue. After 1989 campaigning against the dam became more forthright. Between 1990 and 1993 the following activities took place: two blockades at the site, one lasting for a month; fourteen meetings or demonstrations, the most spectacular being a human chain involving around 60,000 people; twenty-seven seminars, conferences and other meetings among environmental organisations, twenty of which had international participation; twenty-one press conferences, of which eight were international; dozens of excursions for interested parties; three photographic exhibitions; one nature camp; parliamentary lobbying plus participation on both parliamentary and independent committees which discussed the problem. Whilst the future of Gabcíkovo remains partially open, the outcomes so far testify to the success of the environmentalists' campaign: the Nagymaros section of the dam has been scrapped; the scale of the barrier has been reduced; nineteen binding conditions imposed by the Slovak Commission for the Environment on the investor amount to significant improvements from an ecological perspective; a European Parliament resolution to a large extent vindicated environmentalists' arguments; unlawful practices by the investor were uncovered; and the domestic and global public is now much better informed about the issues.
Another major campaign led by SZOPK was launched on Earth Day 1990 against aluminium production in Žiar nad Hronom. Conservationists appealed to the Slovak government for a ‘gift to Slovakia’ in the form of the conversion of an industrial plant which not only had catastrophic effects on human health and the environment, but had little economic perspective either with the collapse of COMECON. Alternative uses for the plant were put forward, and pressure put on the government to use a grant of 600 million crown ($30 million at 1991 prices) for the rehabilitation of the Žiar basin and the revitalisation of historic towns in the region instead of subsidising continued and even extended production. This proposal — put by SZOPK parliamentarians — failed by just a few votes. The campaign took on an international dimension because of the involvement of the Norwegian firm Norsk Hydroaluminium, and SZOPK cooperated intensively with Norwegian and international environmental organisations.
In common with the international environmental movement as a whole, nuclear power has been an important issue for Slovak activists, and an ongoing anti-nuclear campaign has benefited considerably from new international contacts to organisations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth International and Anti-Atom in Vienna. There have been conferences, publications, activities to commemorate the anniversary of Chernobyl (a big rock concert was staged in Bratislava in 1992), a bike ride to the nuclear power plant in Jaslovské Bohunice near Trnava to meet the management of the plant, an international women's march from Bratislava to Trnava, a ‘happening’ in Trnava and a similar action in Bratislava, demonstrations and petitions against the proposed nuclear power plant in Kecerovce, television spots, and so forth.
The influence of international trends in the environmental movement is also evident in the organisation of campaigns against car use in city centres and for better provisions for pedestrians and cyclists. Bratislava quickly acquired a tradition of car-free days, bicycle demonstrations and road blockades. The Campaign for Clean Air also takes its lead from international campaigns. In Slovakia it has mainly involved collecting signatures on petitions to ‘patch up the ozone hole’.
Continuity in practical conservationist activities and public education
If lobbying and a strategy of institutional influence, international integration and a campaigning role represented new departures for SZOPK after 1989, the core of its activities, in terms of participation levels, continued to reside in practical conservation based either on summer brigades or a range of more permanent biodiversity projects. Both types of activity share the ethos of participation and socialisation which were at the heart of those branches of SZOPK which until 1989 acted as communities embodying alternative values and lifestyles. Many of these activities are run more or less spontaneously at the local or regional level, with the central leadership playing a largely coordinating role. Likewise resources invested in public education build on a traditional understanding of the role of the environmental movement formulated during the communist era, when the scarcity of information about society and the consequent lack of public reflection on social (including environmental) problems represented one of the central mechanisms of social control employed by the regime. One of the key goals of the environmental movement, in common with other ‘oppositional’ groups, therefore became the creation of an informed public opinion (for example organising and later publishing minutes from public hearings with local administrators about planned construction projects). Such a mission remains central to the self-identity of SZOPK to this day.
In 1991 SZOPK decided to initiate a project to record and map Slovakia's wetlands, which is an obligation according to the Ramsar convention, signed by Czechoslovakia in 1990. Two hundred volunteers, mostly SZOPK members, were recruited and trained in this field. A series of projects related to wildlife conservation and zoology. For example project Falco aimed to link the protection of birds of prey with public education about ecology, evoking wide public and media interest. More than 400 students took part, some of whom went on to set up bird protection groups, thanks to cooperation between SZOPK and schools.
The majority of SZOPK local branches carry out routine environmental monitoring activities in their own territories, especially those that are located in national parks, where SZOPK has traditionally assisted the national parks administration, its volunteers ably supplementing park wardens in carrying out watches, inventories of flora and fauna and the upkeep of paths, fences, signposts and so on. But SZOPK has also engaged in the preparation of specialist materials to support (mostly successful) applications for new protected regions in Krupinská planina, Cergov, Dunaj-Morava and Silická planina. Many local branches have devoted special attention to the protection of traditional architectural or historical objects, either by putting forward applications for new monuments or through voluntary restoration and conservation work in dozens of locations. One notable example has been the preservation of a traditional agricultural landscape in the White Carpathian mountains (later taken over by the STUŽ/SR regional branch in Trencín). Another local experiment, designed to demonstrate the viability of sustainable development principles in the countryside, has been run in collaboration with the local council in the village of Vištuk near Bratislava, whilst a group of young conservationists set up the VESNA farm, geared towards alternative agriculture, and conceived similarly with a strong public educational purpose. Conservation of trees and ‘green belt’ land constitutes a major part of SZOPK's practical activities. Activists are involved in public information, inventorisation and surveillance of threatened trees and green belt land. They also carry out tree-planting and tree-maintenance.
SZOPK has become the leading provider of environmental education outside the school sector in Slovakia, and is active at central, regional and local levels. It has built up a network of fifteen centres for ecological education, which accounted for the bulk of the grant income which SZOPK received in the early 1990s. Most basic organisations also devote considerable time and resources to educational activities in cooperation with primary and secondary schools, state regional cultural centres, libraries, museums and planetaria. Besides providing public education through its own infrastructure, SZOPK has been closely involved in the provision of training for government environmental officers and teachers at primary and secondary schools, where it has developed and taught courses and provided teaching materials on ecological themes. Commitment to public education has also brought SZOPK into cooperation with organisations and institutions such as the National Centre for Cultural Education, the Slovak Children's Fund, and various journals. Between 1990 and 1993 SZOPK ran the Green Gallery in Bratislava, many of whose exhibitions then toured the country. The gallery also housed a library and video-library serving schools and public education facilities, and an environmental advice shop. The television programme ‘Eko-dalej’ which SZOPK initiated, together with its own publishing activities, also amount to major investments in public education.
One of its most significant post-1989 initiatives was the launch of the ‘Slovak forum of conservationists and creators of the environment’, otherwise known as Ekoforum, as a platform for matter-of-fact discussion among all those interested in the improvement of the state of Slovakia's environment in the full sense of the term. Its regular or ad hoc thematic meetings have given the lay and specialist public the chance to participate in debate around a particular environmental issue. Another attempt to connect with opinion in all parts of the country and all levels of society was facilitated by the announcement of ‘Caring for the Earth — a Strategy for Sustainable Living’ in late 1991 (coordinated by IUCN, UNEP and WWF). SZOPK was responsible for translating the document into both Slovak and Czech, and subsequently distributed the Slovak version to public officials, schools, libraries and centres for ecological education. On the day of the formal announcement it ceremoniously handed over a copy to every mayor in Slovakia.
During its entire existence, SZOPK's activities have been unthinkable without summer conservation camps. Since 1989 however, the burden for this type of activity has been passed from nationwide to local and regional structures of the organisation. Stress has been increasingly laid on practical ‘first aid’ for the environment in a given region. This has typically taken the form of brigade work on the upkeep of state nature reserves, the reconstruction of traditional folk architecture or the clean-up of protected areas of natural beauty. Brigades have taken on additional functions besides their traditional purpose of education, socialisation, popularisation and scientific research. Thus the summer camp in Bodíky in 1991 grew into a form of direct action for the protection of the Danube, inspired by the campaign against the dam; while the summer camp in Vištuk has developed into a running project designed to find a mode of sustainable development for the parish.
Conclusions: from outsider to leading political force — and back again
The exceptionally high public prestige enjoyed by SZOPK, together with direct links to the dominant parties in the first post-communist federal and republic governments in Czechoslovakia, allowed it to exert considerable influence up to 1992. Civic Forum and Public Against Violence both had strong environmental wings and were committed to a version of participative democracy which offered scope for the involvement of non-parliamentary organisations in government decision-making. Thus the period 1990–2 provided the best conditions for institutionalised participation in government. SZOPK's influence then extended beyond purely environmental issues: for example, it was among those civic organisations invited to participate on the creation of new human rights legislation and on plans for the establishment of an ombudsman.
After the 1992 elections Slovak environmentalists found themselves with little or no direct representation in parliament and to a large extent — as the new government led by the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia of Vladimír Meciar began a purge of the state administration — SZOPK lost its influence on the implementation of environmental policy and the distribution of funds. Its own state funding was substantially cut and it was increasingly less able to afford to maintain a paid staff member in each district of Slovakia. Many of these personnel were not prepared to work on a voluntary basis and SZOPK proved incapable of raising alternative funding, which led to a split within the movement. The leadership found itself accused of being ‘too radical’ or ‘insufficiently loyal’ to the government by staff who had come to treat the organisation essentially as a means of earning a living. Consequently the eighth SZOPK congress in April 1993 produced a substantial turnover in the leadership and a policy shift which clipped the wings of the more innovative, progressive and radical environmentalists who had held the upper hand since 1990. The political polarisation which afflicted the whole of Slovak society in the period around independence (in January 1993) inevitably affected SZOPK too. In response to leadership and policy changes the majority of the more active groups and sections within SZOPK broke away and founded independent environmental organisations. Some, however, given the loose organisational structure which SZOPK adopted after 1989, found sufficient space within the organisation to retain an affiliation. This applies to the Bratislava organisation, some centres of environmental education and the Alternative Energy Fund.3 But during this era SZOPK increasingly lost its role and authority as the figurehead of Slovak environmentalism, particularly among the young, and for the first time one can speak of new environmental organisations which do not owe their origins to SZOPK. This process of pluralisation was aided by the increasing activity of established international organisations such as Greenpeace in Slovakia, and the increasing dependence of the NGO sector as a whole on foreign sources of funding during the Meciar era.
Today SZOPK has practically ceased to exist as a nation-wide organisation. It survives in the form of several regional or local branches engaging mostly in traditional forms of nature protection and environmental education. ‘New’ environmental NGOs are much more popular, ambitious and influential. Ironically, many of these have their roots in SZOPK. It is for this historic role, as the agent of first pre-revolutionary social and civic mobilisation and then post-revolutionary organisational transformation within the emerging NGO sector, that the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Conservationists, and especially its Bratislava branch, merits scientific consideration and public acknowledgement. For the same reasons it also shares the blame for the absence of a truly modern, self-confident and influential environmental movement in Slovakia today. The prospects for environmentalism seemed very good in 1989, given the debt owed by the ‘velvet revolution’ to the ideals and the human potential of pre-1989 conservationism (and in particular to the community within and around SZOPK). But instead of being the symbolic launchpad for fulfilment of this potential within a wide social and political context, November 1989 was ‘stolen’ from the environmental movement and retrospectively imbued with a range of significations among which the desire for a ‘greener’ future no longer figures prominently.
Notes
1. A second NGO, Strom Života (Tree of Life) was formed in 1979 as a youth organisation oriented towards organising conservationist brigades and environmental education, but without an overall conception of the environment as a problem, let alone a political issue.
2. A lengthy, painstakingly researched document published in 1987, summarising the environmental problems of the capital city region, as well as touching upon its social and cultural ‘ecology’, Bratislava/nahlas represented an indictment of the communist-era urban and industrial development of Bratislava and became a rallying point for both criticism of the regime and a renewed civic activism to ‘reclaim’ the city for its inhabitants.
3. SZOPK set up a working group under the title ‘Alternative Energy Fund’ in 1990. Its main aim has been to provide information to the public about the possibilities for use of solar, wind, water and biomass energy, and it has published a number of studies on alternative energy policies.