Bialowieza: A Minority View

Despite the claims of environmental activists and the Polish government, Poland's Bialowieza National Park should not be expanded without the meaningful engagement of the local Belarusian minority--a group whose views, until now, have largely been ignored. by Michael Fleming 26 November 2002 OXFORD, United Kingdom--Since the early 1990s, the Bialowieza forest in northeastern Poland, home to the much celebrated and mythologized European bison, has been an area of contestation. Polish environmentalists and international nongovernmental organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have vigorously argued for the extension of the national park, while the people who live in the area have opposed such an extension.

The WWF and its allies maintain that Bialowieza is the last primeval forest in Europe, and that current management practices of the Polish State Forestry service threaten biodiversity. In order to safeguard this valuable piece of "nature," levels of protection must be increased, and the best way to achieve that, they claim, is to create a national park covering, preferably, the entire forest.

In order to press their case, the environmentalists staged, during the 1990s, a number of demonstrations in Warsaw, London, and Canada, and launched a massive Internet campaign to encourage concerned individuals around the world to petition the Polish government to increase the size of the national park. In 1996 the government complied, doubling the size of the park.

However, it has since become apparent that the claims justifying the 1996 extension, and the demand for further expansion, are largely spurious, relying heavily on discredited notions of climax ecology and data that have proven to be incorrect. For example, the charge made by the environmentalists that felling increased during the early 1990s is erroneous; in fact, felling decreased during that period. Furthermore, the claim that Bialowieza is a primeval forest is incorrect, if the notion of primeval continues to mean untouched by human interference. The historical record clearly demonstrates that man has worked the forest for millennia.

Nevertheless, the rhetoric of environmental crisis has continued to guide the debate about Bialowieza, aided by carefully choreographed still photography that presents a depopulated, verdant forest under the threat of the axe and the chainsaw. The global value of this "nature," according to the environmentalists, requires the central government to impose a rigid protection regime. Until 2000 it seemed that they would get their wish.

THE TIDE TURNS

In March 2000, a mass demonstration against the extension of the national park by the people who live and work in the area took place in the district of Hajnowski Powiat--the administrative area where the Polish part of the Bialowieza forest lies. Those people largely belong to the Belarusian national minority. According to a poll in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza that month, over 90 percent of the local residents stood against the extension of the park. They claimed that their concerns had been marginalized and that an enlarged park would undermine their already low standard of living, since local forestry industries and the traditional gathering of forest fruits would be limited or banned.

Those were well-grounded complaints. The WWF and its allies had, however, instituted and sustained a global demand for the park's further extension by mobilizing individuals worldwide to petition the Polish government. Together with intense lobbying by European institutions--which the Polish government has been particularly sensitive to during the process of EU accession--these groups had undermined the democratic processes within Poland to the extent that local peoples' views were excluded from the debate.

Furthermore, in failing to highlight precisely what a national park is, the WWF and its allies were able to depict local people as being anti-environment. In fact, local people care deeply about the forest since it is a source of cultural and economic value. What the local residents were deeply worried about was the demand of the WWF and its allies that the park be accorded the highest possible degree of protection that status as a national park can give. The levels of protection range from open access with a liberal policy toward economic activity to highly restricted access and curbs on economic activity.

Following the demonstration of March 2000, the plans to extend to the park were postponed, as the government and the media slowly became able to penetrate the crisis rhetoric of the environmentalists and perceive the actual reality of the forest. In addition, the Danish organisation DANCEE, through an agreement between the Polish and Danish governments, fostered fora in Bialowieza to encourage dialogue among the various parties. In 2001, DANCEE produced a study that proposed how the forest should be managed, while at the same time safeguarding the rights (economic and democratic) of local people.

STILL ON THE MARGINS

However, despite the progress made since 2000, largely under the auspices of DANCEE, the legitimate right of the local people to have their voice heard is still not being fulfilled, as the discussion remains stubbornly pitched within the agenda of the WWF and its allies. It is in this context that the 2002 Bialowieza plan of Deputy Environment Minister Ewa Symonides should be placed. Speaking in Gazeta Wyborcza on 15 May, Symonides--also Poland's "main conservationist of nature"--does acknowledge the concerns of local people. But she also maintains that "everything that happens in the Bialowieza forest should be geared toward the protection of nature," without elucidating what "nature" is.


Visitors might not like it, but many local residents make a living from forest products.
Courtesy of the Bialowieza Forest Campaign

Symonides thus makes the assumption that man is separated from "nature" (rather than part of it), and that to protect the forest (i.e. nature), it must be separated from the influence of man. She justifies this position by stating that, "without effective protection of the forest, no [European] Union institution will be persuaded to give help in the development of the region."

That may or may not be true. It is, however, what the environmentalists would like the government to believe, as they have repeatedly threatened to take their case to various European institutions. But if the government is concerned that the EU will not help to develop the region because of ineffectual compliance with European legislation, as Symonides suggests, then Warsaw must be equally concerned by the marginalization of the local people--they are, after all, part of the Belarusian national minority.

Poland has, namely, signed and ratified the 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which "guarantees" the rights of national minorities. Article 4.2 states: "The Parties undertake to adopt, where necessary, adequate measures in order to promote, in all areas of economic, social, political and cultural life, full and effective equality between persons belonging to a national minority and those belonging to the majority. In this respect, they shall take due account of the specific conditions of the persons belonging to national minorities."

That pledge suggests that, at the very least, the debate over Bialowieza must acknowledge that the people most keenly affected by the proposed extension are from a national minority and face challenges that the majority does not. For example, a decline in the economic supportive capacity of their areas as a result of any expansion of the national park would necessitate economic migration to centers of assimilation such as Bialystok or Warsaw. Such "forced" migration runs counter to the intentions of the convention.

If democracy is valued, discussion over Bialowieza must break out of the rhetoric of environmental crisis propagated by the WWF and environmentalists. For that to happen, the voice of local people needs to be given due respect. The Framework Convention provides a guide to how a just solution may be achieved.