Not long ago, I received a letter from Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary General and president of the Global Humanitarian Forum. He invited me to join his Global Alliance for Climate Justice. This is an open, democratic club of “green” environmental advocates. It’s an important and just cause. Annan, respected by the whole world, writes that “pollution has a cost, and people are expecting help on adapting to the changing climate.”
It’s a good and accurate definition. Pollution does have a cost. In Ukraine, the cost includes our indifference, stubborn expectation of a free miracle and massive thievery. There is need to dig very far to find an illustration. Our country, one of the most beautiful on earth, with huge ecological potential, is still associated in the West with the Chornobyl nuclear accident, floods in the Carpathians and other ecological disasters.
Last week -another minor point was added to this list: A July 21 accident at the sewer collector in the capital. Kyiv’s debts for fortification of its dams on the Dnipro River, postponing major problems until later and the ever-recurring hope that “everything will be alright” caused a spillage of thousands of cubic meters of waste into the Dnipro. To where the main river of the country carries this waste may be best left unknown.
“What is it compared to global warming and the problems of the whole humankind?” skeptics might ask. But I will repeat the words of Annan: “Pollution has its cost.”
The global climate problems will be solved in Copenhagen this winter. In December 2012, the Kyoto protocol runs out, so a new one will have to be created. The United Nations and the big G20 countries are trying to save the world from climate and ecological disasters by creating new strategic policies. But Ukrainian – and especially Kyiv — leaders can not see anything beyond their own noses. In best-case scenarios, they react to already existing problems and challenges.
It would not be a surprise if, with this attitude, Ukraine soon drowns in its own waste and sewage, while new ecological disasters take place. What sort of future are the Kyiv authorities thinking of when they try to solve an important sewer collector problem with a bunch of bags filled with sand? [The July 21 leak of the outdated collector was patched up by bags filled with sand] At the same time, they continue writing off millions of budget hryvnias to activities equivalent to fighting windmills.
I guess the only way to solve Kyiv’s ecological problems (including the sewer collector problem) is by pressing the flush button on those current plumbers who rule the city but fix nothing.
Vitali Klitschko is the World Boxing Council heavyweight boxing champion and leader of a 14-seat faction on the 120-member Kyiv City Council
