Belgrade European Green Capital candidacy: Lies harmful to our health

The candidacy of the City of Belgrade for the title of European 2023 Green Capital is an attempt to divert attention from the catastrophic consequences on health that leaves carelessness and ignoring the problem of pollution. After eight years of SNS ruling, it is clear that they have no intention of dealing with tackling huge problems, but exclusively manipulating the public and diverting attention.

A decade-long problem of catastrophically polluted air that poses a daily threat to public health, the use of coal in energy production, the construction of an incinerator in Vinca that will continue to pollute the air, non-compliance with European waste treatment laws, lack of wastewater treatment, slow adoption or failure to pass necessary laws. plans and strategies, destruction of public green areas, natural habitats and protected natural assets are the reality in which Belgrade is located. The complexity of the problems that characterize our environment requires serious and urgent solutions.

This candidacy is not a frivolous ambition of the mayor who accidentally ended in the city’s top position, but a conscious deception and an attempt to keep the public in the delusion that Belgrade is a healthy and orderly environment, for which they care about so diligently, while they actually do not offer any real solution to the problem.
In order to deserve this title, the committee considers 12 indicators that include precisely the critical points of our environment: air quality, waste management, water, nature and biodiversity, sustainable land use, green growth and eco-innovation, adaptation to climate change, climate change mitigation. change, sustainable urban mobility, energy performance and governance.

And the candidacy itself, among other things, implies the measures that the cities have implemented in the previous five to ten years, as well as short-term and long-term plans and ways to achieve them. Next year, the French city of Grenoble will take this title due to achievements in the areas of climate change mitigation, sustainable land use, sustainable urban mobility, noise reduction and energy performance. Grenoble, among other things, massively encouraged the planting of trees, and during the ten-year period, it reduced the emissions of harmful gases by 25%.

Compared to such achievements, this candidacy will be another lost race for the citizens of Belgrade, solely because the City did not deal with environmental problems. On the contrary, it let them grow at the same rate as the profits of a few who decided on their own interests, not the interests of the community, for whom they were and remain responsible.

Belgrade can be a good city, but only if people coming to positions of responsibility make decisions in accordance with the interests of the citizens. There is a huge potential for change in our city, and for us the best indicator of that is the number of people who join Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own. The potential of a city lies in the people, their knowledge and will to participate in shaping and arranging their city in the best way.