Leaping Ahead - BlueLink Annual Report 2023
BlueLink 13-08-2024.
Helping civil society to stand for nature protection, democracy and European values, as stipulated by BlueLink’s mission, did not get any easier during 2023. The war in Ukraine continued raging just across the Black Sea. And another horrible conflict erupted in October bringing loss of human life, suffering and violence in Israel and Gaza. The internet turned into a war zone, further deepening mistrust and divisions within civil society across Europe.
BlueLink looked to better understand what was going on, and get its primary target group of civil society activists and experts alert and prepared. We sought meaningful European responses for green movements to the war in Ukraine together with Groen Links in the Netherlands, as part of a project of the Green European Foundation. We examined cases of activists accounts being suspended by Facebook and shared coalition the reasons and recommendations how to avoid that with a broader civic community around the pro-European Ravnbi.bg in Bulgaria.
Another major line of action – and division – was climate change, in response to mainstream media and political speakers accelerating attacks against the EU’s Green Deal. Strengthening the Bulgarian Climate Coalition was on BlueLink’s immediate agenda.
Connecting climate concerns to access to environmental justice and human rights lead BlueLink to a major conceptual breakthrough around climate rights. A novel vision around them emerged under the leadership of BlueLink’s policy analyst Plamen Peev, as part of BlueLink’s close collaboration with the European Justice and Environment network, and funding from the EU’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme.
We were able to promote citizens access to environmental justice to Bulgarian institutions, including the High Administrative Court and the Ombudsman. This was part of a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Water (MOEW).
BlueLink investigated the alarming advance of corporate intervention with government, law making, mass media and science. Outside of carbon power generation, our attention turned on to tobacco industry, in partnership with the Smoke-free Life Coalition in Bulgaria.
Sharp inflation rising employment costs pose difficulties for grant-based civil society organisations as BlueLink, particularly in the context of stagnating and heavily bureaucratized donor support. Receiving compensation for previously completed work enabled BlueLink’s team to deal with the challenge and navigate successfully across 2023.
