Ecologia Information

ECOLOGIA recognized that environmental NGOs in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were able to establish their credibility by providing high quality independent expertise and by advocating scientifically grounded policies. By contrast, Americans tend to approach environmental activism from a distinctly political perspective, viewing broad public participation as the key to success. ECOLOGIA brought these perspectives together, into an organizational strategy combining professional quality environmental science with effective public participation mechanisms. For example, starting in 1992, ECOLOGIA's Citizens' Environmental Monitoring Network provided NGOs in eleven countries with equipment and training to check for and publicize water pollutants, as a step toward changing industrial practice and public policy. Working within the framework of the Local Agenda 21 process for sustainable development planning, which grew out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, ECOLOGIA's "Sustainable Development in Nuclear Regions" (1999-2004) program worked with Russian and Lithuanian communities to reduce energy needs, to create new job opportunities and thus to reduce dependency on nuclear power and nuclear weapons production. Led by initiative from Russian staff, ECOLOGIA became increasingly involved in helping Russian enterprises implement environmental management systems in order to reduce pollution and production costs. From this starting point, we saw that business standards have great potential for broader societal improvement. ECOLOGIA participated in the development of the ISO 14000 international environmental management standards, contributing especially to the ISO greenhouse gas accounting standards (giving ground rules for measuring emissions and reduction, reporting and verification).