The scheme was first planned in the 1960s, and construction began in
the 1980s. Austria agreed to finance the two huge dams on the Danube at
Nagymaros in Hungary, and at Gabcikovo in Czechoslovakia, in return for
hydroelectric power.

But environmentalists in all three countries opposed the project, saying
that the dams would change the flow of ground water and pollute drinking
water.

Opposition to the dams became a cornerstone of the anti-government movement
that eventually prevailed in Hungary and to a lesser extent in Czechoslovakia
(Forum, 16 December 1989). Austria was forced out of the project and is
fighting for compensation, after investing most of the £400 million
spent so far. Now the half-finished dams and canals sit there, disrupting
the flow of water in the region.

Ivan Tirpak, environment minister for the state of Slovakia, announced
last week that he wants to finish the Gabcikovo dam by cutting out the Hungarians
and working entirely within Slovakia. Tirpak said finishing the nearly-completed
dam was the only sensible action, given the enormous investment and the
ecological damage the project has already caused.

Josef Vavrousek, Czechoslovak minister and head of the federal environment
commission, said late last month that the federal government would only
consider completing the project on Czechoslovak territory if talks with
Hungary fail.

Slovakia’s eagerness for going it alone is evidence that the state is
keen to assert its independence from the federal government. Also, Slovakia
expects a huge surge in demand for electricity as the burgeoning market
economy picks up. But there is substantial public opposition to continued
use of the region’s highly polluting brown coal, and to nuclear power. Hydroelectric
power could provide Slovakia with an alternative energy source and a ready
export.

Vavrousek says the bid by Slovakia to finish the dam ‘would be possible,
but technically very difficult, and would have very negative environmental
effects’. Czechoslovakia wants to set up a joint commission with Hungary
to study alternative fates for the existing construction, using technical
assistance from the European Commission. Hungary accepts the need for a
joint study but without involving other countries.

As long as the deadlock between the two countries persists, says Vavrousek,
the federal authorities will have difficulty stopping the Slovaks from unilaterally
going back to work on Gabcikovo. The Hungarians, in private meetings, have
threatened to block river and lorry traffic from Czechoslovakia into Hungary
if work goes ahead.

Vavrousek is to visit Budapest this month to discuss the situation with
members of the Hungarian parliament, the vast majority of whom oppose continued
construction of the dams.

Vavrousek’s plans are outlined in a ‘state ecological policy’ paper
presented to the European Commission in Brussels. The commission is administering
a programme, financed by Western countries, to help Eastern European countries
renew their economies.

Pollution in Czechoslovakia means the population’s life expectancy is
5 to 7 years shorter than in western industrialised countries. The damage
to the environment is constantly increasing and already reduces the GNP
by at least 7 per cent. Public concern is ‘bordering on an explosion’ in
Prague, northern Bohemia, and other heavily polluted regions. More than
50 per cent of the drinking water is poisoned by industrial and agricultural
effluent, according to the policy paper, and ‘no hygienically safe water
is available for infants’.

Vavrousek and a team of about 60 people have broad authority from the
parliament to integrate environmental policies into all aspects of Czechoslovakia’s
economic reforms and development. He aims to ‘short-cut’ the government’s
planning process by involving all of the important governmental bodies in
setting environmental policy.

In the short term, Vavrousek is focusing on making environment protection
a central element in the reforms that will create a market economy. ‘Eco-taxes’
and financial incentives will play a major role. Vavrousek believes that
the 10-year environment plan must succeed, even ‘at the cost of delaying
the growth of material consumption’.

Vavrousek will shortly send three draft laws to the national parliament:
a framework law requiring an environmental impact assessment for new plans,
programmes and projects, and laws on the management of wastes and the protection
of the air.

Towards the end of the decade, the emphasis will shift to promoting
investment in technologies and products that cause minimal environmental
damage.

Jan Mikulas, one of the new ministry’s top officials, presented nine
projects for financial assistance to the European Commission on Tuesday.
The projects found ’80 per cent approval’, Mikulas said afterwards.

High on the list is a five-year plan, costing about Pounds sterling
8.5 million, to improve safety at the ageing V-213 nuclear reactors, which
were built according to Soviet designs from the early 1970s.

Other projects include modern treatment facilities for hazardous waste,
two centres for treating PCBs and a new high-capacity plant for treating
waste oil.

Cleaning up the drinking water will take a long time, so the government
wants to set up an operation to produce and distribute clean, bottled water,
based on the use of returnable/recyclable plastic bottles.

Czechoslovakia will also try to break the deadlock with Hungary over
the near-completed system of dams at Gabcikovo and Nagymaros on the Danube.
An independent consultant will analyse a series of options and recommend
a solution aimed at minimising the impact the dams will have on the environment.

THE AIM of this ambitious study from John McCormick (which began six
years ago as a master’s thesis for the University of London) is to provide
the first history of environmentalism as a global social, economic, and
political phenonmenon. He promises to show how a popular movement finally
pushed the environment to the top of the international political agenda
where, he believes, it will remain beside other crucial issues of governmental
policy: the economy, defence, and the public welfare.

Environmental revolution is the outcome of the ‘new environmentalism’
of the 1960s. McCormick believes it is a conceptual revolution that has
overturned the assumptions of centuries and that brings fundamental changes
in the values of human societies around the world.

These changes include the rediscovery of the dependency of human life
on a healthy natural environment; a reassessment of modern technologies
in terms of their contribution to the quality of life; and a challenge to
replace orthodox models of economic growth with new models of sustainable
development based on the long-term management of environmental resources.

While McCormick’s conclusions are well-stated and easyfor a non-ideological
environmentalist, such as myself, to agree with, the real accomplishment
of his book is not in the domain of intellectual or social history. His
book is too dependent on secondary sources and too focused on western English-speaking
nations to be considered a full study of a global mass movement.

It is, however, the first well-documented overview of the leading events,
personalities and global institutions involved in environmental protection
issues during the 20th century, from the point of view of a professional
environmentalist. Over the past 10 years, McCormick has worked with and
for most of the global institutions he is analysing.

Beginning with a brief description of the early nature protection groups
and activities in Britain and the US, McCormick becomes more authorative
when documenting the international debate on the need to conserve natural
resources after the Second World War.

He sprinkles facts from the little-known corridors of international
environmental diplomacy throughout the book. Did you know that President
Theodore Roosevelt had already proposed in 1909 to hold the first international
conference on the conservation of natural resources, only to have the idea
vetoed by his successor? Or that the Belgians and the Dutch won the argument
against the British and the Americans for the establishment of a global
nature protection organisation that would be independent of the United Nations,
‘thus denying environmentalists an effective input into UN affairs for nearly
30 years,’ McCormick comments. When it was finally established in 1948,
he notes that the International Union for the Protection of Nature ended
up as an unwieldly hybrid of governmental and nongovernmental bodies.

McCormick traces six reasons for the sudden rise in prominence of environmental
issues in the late 1960s. The affluent postwar generation began asking questions
about the quality of life. The increasing number of atmospheric atomic tests
raised public fears about the danger of fallout. Then Rachel Carson’s book
Silent Spring exposed the dangers of chemical pesticides. A series of environmental
disasters hit the headlines: oil spills, killer smog, Minamata and itai
itai disease in Japan. ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s pooled their research efforts on environmental
problems, and other public movements in the US and Western Europe aimed
to resolve the related issue of social and economic justice.

In the 1970s, the ‘prophets of doom’, took over. While legislators enacted
sweeping statutes and sent off squadrons of young administrators to clean
up the environment, some scientists and groups focused on identifying the
physical causes of environmental problems and extrapolating the consequences
of unrestrained population growth (for example, in PaulEhrlich’s The Population
Bomb), uncontrolled pollution (Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle) and
economic growth per se (the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth).

While naturalists and nature enthusiasts in the arts and politics had
led the drive for protection in the first half of the century, now the professional
scientists, especially the biologists, took over. McCormick also covers
the political and institutional highlights of the 1970s, including the creation
of the United Nations Environment Programme, the pivotal UN Stockholm Conference
on the Human Environment in 1973, the creation of national environmental
agencies in 140 countries, the rise of the Green parties,and the development
of the discussion of environmental protection in the Third World.

But in contrast to the global organisations, the European Community
is given one meagre page, perhaps because the book is more about the evolution
of national and global, rather thanregional, institutions. The Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development also barely receives a mention.

I believe that McCormick is right in his belief that environmentalism
constitutes an essential and lasting revolution in human values. The Global
Environmental Movement offers a highly useful historical overview to everyone
working in the field and identifies numerous questions for future students
and researchers to follow up.

Cynthia Whithead is a freelance science writer. She specialises in environmental
issues, and is based in Brussels.