Albania
Civil Society Far From Local Needs
Tirana - Achieving environmentally sustainable
tourism in Albania will also be up to the
efforts of communities and civil society organisations,
but as in much of the post-socialist
world, non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) and their donors will have to clean up
their act first. The dependence on foreign
donors and philanthropists is still causing
Albanian civic organizations to respond more
to donor requests than to the local needs they
supposedly represent.
Organisations fostering civil society development
are powerful actors in Albania, and
have been central in promoting democratisation
in the formerly communist country. Donors
are often accused by local civic organisations of
being inflexible, withholding vital information
on common projects and of putting forward
abstract guidelines which are not based on any
study of local conditions and needs.
Lack of altruism
" Morally civic organizations should represent
those who they claim to represent, but legally
they are obliged towards the donors, so I think
donors should be more responsible," Auron Tare,
director of the Albanian National Trust told IPS.
But not everything can be expected from donors.
" If local Albanians themselves don't engage in
protecting the coastline and the environment,
whatever donors do, it's not going to happen,"
says Tare. "They have their own interests, and
these are never purely altruistic."
The lack of altruism is also pervasive among
activists themselves. "Mostly NGOs here are
opportunistic, not specialised, and they will
chew on whatever is thrown at them in terms
of funding," Arian Gace, national coordinator
for the Global Environment Facility (GEF)
small grants programme told IPS. Working for
an NGO often means access to higher living
standards than the rest of the population, and
access to Western goods or visas in a country that
up until recently had little contact with the outside
world. While acknowledging that Albania is
living under a "very hard capitalism" similar to
that of "150 years ago in America", Tare is even
more critical of the NGOs' raison d'être.
Democratisation as primary goal
" Everybody makes an NGO because that's a
way of making money out of Westerners. And
Westerners want to work with NGOS. This
creates another East-West world of corruption."
Tare describes NGO work as "just a way of
doing a lot of paperwork, seminars, workshops,
but nothing on the ground.
pinpoint any concrete achievements by NGOs,
he said, "I don't know of any yet." Representatives
of NGOs, however, disagree. Xhemal
Mato, executive director of the Ecomovement
Centre, says there is truth to some of the accusations,
but explains difficulties faced by wellintentioned
activists in Albania. "We are only
given money for meetings and seminars, not for
starting something concrete," Mato told IPS. "It
is very important to be able to find funds to
raise awareness on challenges such as Illegal
building in the coast or building without consideration
to environmental needs."
Pushing the municipality
With donors seeing the primary goal of
democratisation as having been partly achieved,
funds have started to dwindle, and competition
from the many Albanian NGOs for the little
available funding is stiffening. "Donors are not
as abundant as at the beginning of democratisation,
and there is very big competition," says
Mato. "Now that the political aspect is over,
donors feel governments should continue doing
the job." Even with poor funding, Mato believes concrete examples in which you can say that
without NGOS some problems could not be solved,"
he says. One such example, he says, is
environmental NGOS pushing the municipality
of Tirana to raise its waste treatment standards.
Other important projects promoted by
NGOs, such as an awareness campaign in ecotourism,
remain only on paper as the organisations
struggle to obtain government support.
Unfortunately for Mato, his group and other
NGOs feel the government is not on their side
precisely as a result of one of their positive
functions.
" Because we frequently are a second voice for
journalists in contradicting the government, the
government doesn't really like NGOs." Others
think environmental groups in Albania have not
achieved enough from lack of experience in negotiating
and reaching compromises. "Albania is
not in a position to make great sacrifices to save
the environment, and we have to make the most
we can from what we have," Gace told IPS. "Part
of the coast will have to be sacrificed and other
parts protected as part of a sort of social pact."
This is what Gace feels environmental groups
have not yet grasped. "The NGO community
would have gotten much more if they would
come to the table with options and be ready to
actually bargain, because otherwise the other
part will make a decision anyway," he said. "I've
seen them reacting too much emotionally, they've
been saying we'll protect everything, everywhere,
all the time."