Written by Maruška Mileta (Croatia), a member of the YFoEE Climate Justice working group and YFoEE Steering Group
After the UN climate talks in Warsaw last year, where I was together with a Young FoEE team, I knew something needed to change in my country and region. Many communities here are struggling with dirty energy like coal, and a big number of civil society organisations are fighting those projects. But rarely these issues are connected to climate change. There is no national climate activism. There is no regional climate movement. And then I thought: ”How come? Can’t we do something about it even if we are in a deep economical crisis? Who can bring the change? Governments? Probably not without public pressure. Older generations who have lost faith in the system and don’t think anything will ever change? Or younger generations who are still holding on to a spark of hope? Yes, it’s them! It’s us, you and me, who should start changing people’s minds. To fight the current narrative and mobilise people for the climate issue. To change the current system fueled by dirty industries.”
People in the Balkans still aren’t realising that climate change is something that is happening now and here, and not in some distant future. It is not the problem of future generations, but of youth today. Developing countries in the Global South have already been suffering the devastating consequences for years, while the Western world is turning their heads and blocking any meaningful progress. But they are not immune to these changes, and neither are we. Unfortunatelly, the Balkan region is feeling climate change hard. In devastating floods which have hit Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Serbia and Croatia in May, more than a million people were displaced, thousands have lost everything, more than three dozen were confirmed dead, and hundreds of thousands were left without clean water and electricity.
This is only the beginning
This happened right when we (Zelena akcija/FoE Croatia) started to organise a regional climate camp which would gather around 50 people from 11 countries in the end. Probably the first event of this kind in this part of Europe. The floods were a tragic proof of the urgency needed for climate action – we can’t wait any longer and we need to start mobilising now.
So having this in mind, we went ahead with the event and gathered youth from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine in an ecologically renovated old military complex on the Island of Sholta. A week-long programme with educational sessions on climate justice, dirty energy, community power, false and good solutions to climate change, climate science and policy, skillsharing workshops, mobilisation planning towards the UN climate talks in Paris 2015 and beyond, and many others, was more than fruitful. Speakers who came from Croatia and abroad (Belgium, UK, Austria, Norway, Canada) inspired the participants who truly understood that humans are driving climate change, that communities in developing countries are at the frontlines of climate change impacts, and that we need to act now and fight climate change in a just and social manner. Afterall, what have we achieved if we manage to salvage the planet, but leave people living in an unjust world full of poverty and inequality?
For us as Balkan youth, this is only the beginning. We are still a small group, but we have already started working on the first steps of our joint regional work – raise awareness on climate change, fight dirty industry and the current non-functioning system, promote positive solutions and people power, bring forth the voices of affected communities, inspire and mobilise young people to join the climate fight in order put pressure on national goverments. We will work as hard as we can to awaken this region which has suffered a lot through the past years and decades, and give the people a bit of hope. As the too often used cliche ”together we are stronger” says, what the governments and corporations fear the most is the power of the people. So let’s show them that the youth of the Balkans will no longer be silent. You’ll be hearing from us very soon.
(c) Festa-Isufi
(c) Festa-Isufi
(c) Maja Bradarić