Ukrainian Environmental Association
"ZELENY SVIT" (Green World)

The following report was submitted to CCSI by Serghiy Fedorynchyk, chief of the Zeleny Svit Information Center.

Zeleny Svit (ZS) was founded by a group of Kyiv writers and artists in December 1987 and established as a national organisation at its first Congress in October 1989. The by-laws of ZS were registered with the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice in December 1992. Since 1991 ZS has been an associate member of Friends of the Earth International.

All local ZS organisations--there were more than 50 in 1994--are fully independent as long as they operate in accordance with the ZS by-laws. A "Green Council," consisting of representatives of different regions of Ukraine, meets periodically to discuss and coordinate activities.

Local ZS groups carry out different activities, usually organised around local environmental problems. These include: energy issues, tree planting, environmental tourism, waste proces-sing, protests against pollution, human rights protection issues, and providing independent environmental expertise.

At a national level, in 1991 ZS conducted an Independent Public Chornobyl Investigation, looking into the "reasons, circumstances and after-effects of the Chornobyl disaster." (An English edition of the Report is avail-able). Currently ZS is organising the first ever nationwide campaign for the conservation of certain special protected zones along Ukraine's rivers. This campaign will begin with a public inventory-ing of the situation in these zones, and will be followed by "precedent-setting" actions to enforce existing laws and punish violators.

Presently, the main priorities of ZS activities are:

• Environmental education.
• Public revision of the Law for the Protection of Nature and public pressure on its violators.
• To develop ZS groups as model communities, or examples of civic society. That is, builders of democracy and its institutions from a grassroots level.

Unfortunately, according to Fedorynchyk, "there were many problems, troubles and mistakes in the development of Zeleny Svit. . . But we believe that we will overcome them based on lawful principles, and will have a strong, effective and democratic national environmental organisation, structurally similar to Friends of the Earth--England."

Zeleny Svit's main achievements in 1994 were:

• Holding a local referendum about the expansion of the Zaporizzhia nuclear power plant.
• Carrying our regular environmental TV and radio broadcasts in Artiomovsk, Kirovograd, Vinnitsa, and Pavlodar.
• Organizing seven environmental investigation trips along the rivers Bahmut, Vorskla, Oster, Ingoulets, Saxagan, Slouch, Styr--to examine the situation on the rivers and do "environmental propaganda."
• With the support of ISAR, IREX and Vidrodzhennia (Ukrainian-Soros foundation) several local groups use e-mail, and we hope to involve all of our groups in such networking.

Zeleny Svit
6, Mykhailivska str., room 306
Kyiv-1, 252001, Ukraine
phone: (380-44) 228-64-25
fax: (380-44) 228-1086
E-mail: [email protected]

For more information or to order a subscription, see our publications page.

The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/95-10/zelnsvit.htm
Last updated: March 26 1996

Center for Civil Society International [email protected]