Geopolitics and the environment in Eastern Europe

Abstract

The causes of the severe pollution that has affected parts of Eastern Europe lie in the production methods and the political authoritarianism of the Communist period, but the relationship between most of the region and Western Europe in developmental terms has to be taken into account. On either count the geopolitics of Eastern Europe was an important historical factor before 1989, and it has remained one since then, but with influences from the East being replaced by influences from the West. The change of economic and political system brought expertise and techniques capable of making production more sensitive to the protection of the environment, at the same time making the region safe for the inward foreign investment that it needed. But aid, expertise and advice brought an element of tutelage which has influenced the evolution of the environmental movement in the region, substituting itself for grass‐roots activism and weakening environmental groups in relation to their governments.