ISWM in action

In connection with the Dutch-funded MATRA project Developing a model for sustainable water and waste management for rural areas in Bulgaria, the project team from the Institute of Ecological Modernisation (IEM) in Varna, with support from WASTE staff, conducted a village meeting in the village of Topoli, Bulgaria. The village meeting was conceived and conducted in the framework of ISWM, and so it is an interesting example of ISWM in action.

For further information on the project, contact ascheinberg@waste.nl or d.angelov@enviro-link.org .

Village Meeting, Monday, June 27th 20:00 in the village of Topoli, Varna, Bulgaria

To make the village meeting a successful event a set of goals were set in advance and input from presenters had to be based on meeting these goals. Goals of the meeting were not only:

to socialise the key features of the programme, and also to avoid creating too high expectations in relation to the completion of the sewer system in their village.
to empower the audience to speak, to interrupt, and to generally feel that they are important in the project and in the whole decision-making process.

But also:

to open channels of communication between the project team and the villagers,
to socialise the preliminary findings of the baseline in general, and the problem analysis to date
to gather additional information on village environmental problems not yet known to the project team, and maybe known to only a few villagers.

And of course

to create a sense of collective ownership of the problems;
to foster a sense of collective involvement in the project; and
to give the villagers the experience of talking about something they know so that they would feel empowered later to speak about decisions about pilot projects.

The presentations of the village committee, the IEM and WASTE were followed by discussions. The villagers responded to the invitation to participate with a level of activity that surprised even the project team. A number of new environmental problems were brought up, ranging from the use of mercury in septic tanks to problems with air quality and a large illegal dump of construction and demolition waste. Both men and women spoke actively. Some of the people present on the meeting showed familiarity with composting and rainwater harvesting.

The more practical part of the meeting aimed getting the villagers and the village committee to choose a suitable pilot project. The method and approach was to give a first level of information on technical alternatives that are affordable within the MATRA project, to the point where the villagers could have a meaningful conversation in the meeting. Then about what approaches could be interesting for them. The presentation form was comparable to that of an introductory training, but it was briefer.

The villagers again responded very actively, they immediately began to discuss and debate which options they thought were interesting, applying the information to the situation in the village.

The discussion also focused completely on the options presented; the message that the project could not pay for the sewer system completion was clearly received and accepted by those present.

There was a mix of opinion for the physical projects, with a preference for composting or rainwater harvesting, and opinion for a lobbying campaign,

Those present, and Mayor Dimitrova, concluded that they could not make the decision immediately, but that another meeting was necessary which had more advance publicity and a larger attendance, with more time to gather information and spread it among themselves.