Global-Local Linkage in the Western Balkans: The Politics of Environmental Capacity Building in...

Global–Local Linkage in the WesternBalkans: The Politics of EnvironmentalCapacity Building in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Adam FaganQueen Mary, University of London

This article argues that efforts by international donors, in particular the EU, to build the capacity ofenvironmental NGOs in Bosnia-Herzegovina has less to do with fostering democratic stability and civilsociety, and more to do with establishing a new epistemic community. Among critics, the technocratic,apolitical and rather benign term ‘capacity building’ has become code for the transformation andundermining of ‘local’ knowledge, the disregard for existing ‘capacities’, the construction of newnetworks of experts and the importation of rationalities based on West European discourses andconstructions of ecological risk, sustainable development and policy responses. Not surprisingly, theweaker the post-socialist state – legacies of ethnic conflict, the severity of economic collapse – the greaterthe extent to which capacity-building assistance seeks to transform policy communities, actors andnetworks. From the perspective of environmental mobilisations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is argued thatthe limitations of environmental capacity-building assistance are due in large part to the failure of donorsto distinguish between different ‘capacities’, and their insistence on prioritising the development ofproject grant expertise and organisational management know-how over and above other developmentalneeds. The article illustrates the extent to which environmental movement organisations either requirevery basic developmental assistance or need more bespoke support that will enable them to engageeffectively in political and legal contestation with the state. The article concludes that while aspects ofenvironmental capacity-building assistance are clearly having a positive impact, the rigidity of donor aidand the framework of project grants as the mechanism for delivering assistance are limiting the impact toa narrow elite of organisations, of which some are neither non-governmental nor linked to indigenouslocal environmental networks within civil society.

One of the most tangible expressions of global–local linkage in post-socialistEurope has been, since the early 1990s, the provision of development aid to localnon-governmental organisations (NGOs). In particular, environmental move-ment organisations across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Balkanshave been the recipients of tutelage, training and the transfer of know-how to theextent that many such organisations depend entirely on foreign-sourced projectgrants for their existence. Such aid is invariably framed in the language of‘capacity building’, the core assumption of which is that NGOs need technicalassistance and the transfer of organisational management know-how to make amore effective input within policy networks, professionalise their operations andobtain donor revenue and successfully manage project grants.

Although in its day-to-day operation and implementation such assistance employsthe ostensibly technical language of ‘capacity building’, donor intervention is

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00711.x

POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008 VOL 56, 629–652

© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Political Studies Association

http://www.politicalstudies.org

rationalised and justified in terms of the normative values of democracy and civilsociety. In other words, on one level the assistance purports to be non-ideologicaland apolitical – transferring rational strategies and advice, best practice andeffective know-how – but in terms of explaining and justifying the overridinglogic of such intervention it employs normative values and a highly ideologicalrhetoric.What this article argues is that despite the discursive frame of democra-tisation and the narrative of building civil society, such intervention,particularly inthe context of environmental assistance, is ostensibly about the construction ofnew epistemic communities and policy networks that are conversant with andcommitted to the broad environmental policy framework of the EU and the statedenvironmental objectives of the stabilisation and accession agendas.Such assistancemay involve strengthening certain manifestations of civil society, but not neces-sarily the grass-roots organisations or environmental campaigning networks thattend to be seen as expressions of civil society in transitional and democratisingstates.Evidence gathered as part of this research suggests that the actors most likelyto benefit from capacity assistance in fact have little connection with civil society;indeed, they may be governmental rather than non-governmental organisations.

From the empirical perspective of the Bosnian environmental movement it isargued that capacity-building efforts undertaken by international donors andagencies (in particular the EU) actually do little to empower local organisationsto connect with the communities they claim to represent, or to strengthen theirsustainability and long-term development. Instead the focus is on developingproject management know-how among professional NGOs and quasi-state insti-tutions, developing their capacity to participate in the formation and implemen-tation of policy.

The Bosnian perspective highlights the extent to which capacity-building assis-tance does little to augment the ability of local community-based environmentalorganisations and networks to engage with policy officials and political elites,or to mobilise political resources around particular local campaigns. Morepoignantly, the perspective reveals the extent to which capacity assistance andintervention may in certain instances serve to undermine and exclude localknowledge and existing capacities in favour of newly created actor networks andnetworks of knowledge deemed to be acceptable and effective. When capacityassistance does engage with local knowledge by working with scientific commu-nities and established networks of experts, the assistance tends to have a trans-forming impact: scientists and experts will be encouraged to work on the specificprojects identified by donors’ agencies, to develop project grant know-how andto privilege English-language skills and an ability to complete grant applications.While this is not necessarily entirely a bad thing, it reflects the underlyingassumption on which much foreign assistance is delivered, namely that capa-city has to be built from scratch and that environmental know-how is largelyabsent from post-socialist states and societies. In the specific context of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), the widely expressed assumption is that ethnic conflict

630 ADAM FAGAN

© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Political Studies AssociationPOLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(3)

during the 1990s destroyed any vestiges of scientific know-how, conservationismand collective action worth salvaging from the socialist period that could bepositively deployed in defence of the environment.

The research undertaken for this article does reveal evidence of capacity assistanceworking with what might be termed the existing epistemic community.1

However, the perspective of a local environmental network that has emerged tocontest illegal and environmentally hazardous planning decisions illustrates how,through the particular deployment of aid and the logic of project grants, donorsare risking excluding established networks of knowledge in favour of newlyformed NGOs, established as a response to the availability of donor funding,rather than as an expression of indigenous civil society.

The article will begin with a critical assessment of the context in which envi-ronmental politics has been conceptualised in post-socialist Europe; in particular,the underlying assumptions about democratisation and environmental changeand the implicit normative assertions concerning Western policy approaches,patterns of consumption, institutions and practices. The discussion will thenprovide a critique of capacity building as the dominant framework used both byscholars and donors for assessing environmental damage and abatement, as well asthe basis for the provision of aid and assistance to post-socialist states. Suchconceptual critiques will frame the analysis of environmental capacity building inBiH, which will be the focus of the remainder of the article.

Democracy, the Environment and Post-socialist Europe

Our conceptualisation of environmental politics is heavily influenced by theexperience of the American and West European green movements and theirevolution since the late 1960s. Cross-national comparative analysis of Europeanmovements has established a normative framework for understanding the impactof resources, political and institutional contexts, knowledge and a variety of othervariables that are seen as determining the nature of movement mobilisations andpolicy development (Doherty, 2002; Rootes, 2003). The universalisation ofEuropean and American standards and norms for environmental activism andengagement is undoubtedly a salient aspect of the more general long-termprocess, described by David Held et al. as ‘the global diffusion of the Westernindustrial model’ (Held et al., 1999, p. 4). However, such Western-centricismgained particular momentum after the collapse of the socialist states and the endof the Cold War. Indeed, the revolutions of 1989 ushered in a period in which allaspects of political development, whether in the former Eastern Europe orelsewhere, were viewed through the lens of democratisation and the institutionalnorms of existing Western liberal democracy.

It is hard to refute the claim that ‘the democratization of society and strongdemocratic structures and procedures are the most favourable context for ... the

CAPACITY BUILDING IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA 631


management of major environmental pollution’ (Weidner and Janicke, 2002,p. 433). Democratisation, as Valerie Assetto observes, ‘should be treated as anecessary but insufficient condition for developing local policy capacity forenvironmental protection in countries newly emerging from authoritarian rule’(Assetto et al., 2003, p. 249). Through the dispersal of administrative and politicalauthority, democratisation should empower local elites and citizens to deal withenvironmental problems more effectively.

However, in tune with much of the recent literature on post-socialist develop-ment, this article challenges the underlying assertion that post-socialist states,regardless of their economic position, political fragility or indeed recent periodsof destructive ethno-nationalism, are ultimately on course to Western-stylepolitical democracy.2 What is concluded from this Bosnian case study is thatstrategies for strengthening non-Western green movements appear to set aside thespecificity of the political context (the absence of functioning democratic insti-tutions and accountable elites, efficacious environmental movement organisa-tions) in their quest to apply what are seen as technical solutions in ordersupposedly to replicate Western patterns of interaction.

Recent scholarly analyses of environmental mobilisations under post-socialismhave placed emphasis on the importance of the socialist period as a determi-nant of movement actor behaviour, particularly at the local level (Carmin andJehlicka, 2005; Fagan and Jehlicka, 2003). Studies have challenged the assump-tion that civic engagement and collective participation were entirely absentfrom East European socialist societies and illustrated the extent to which col-lective and participatory activities characterised conservation movementsin many states across the region until the late 1980s. For example, in theirstudy of the transformation of the Czech Union for Nature Protection,JoAnn Carmin and Petr Jehlicka contend that patterns of interaction andengagement during the socialist period tend to be ignored, or assumed not tohave existed in the absence of independent associations and liberal democraticcivil society:

Although mandatory participation was a vehicle for the state to promote its goalsand inculcate participatory and collectivist values, in many cases, organizationalmembership was still a matter of individual choice and, when possible, peoplejoined associations where they could work on societal issues that were of personalconcern (Carmin and Jehlicka, 2005, p. 398).

Although there was no overt sense of advocacy or notions of contestation in thesesocialist-era mobilisations, the networks that formed to protect nature and under-take conservation did assume a more political role at certain times. InYugoslavia,a greater degree of political liberalisation during the 1980s and the gradualerosion of state power enabled the growth of various New Social Movements,including environmental activists who actively and openly opposed the construc-tion of nuclear power plants (Benderly, 1997, p. 193).

632 ADAM FAGAN


Environmental Capacity Building: A Conceptual Critique

Academic discussion of environmentalism in post-socialist Europe tends to occurwithin the broad conceptual framework of capacity building. Capacity buildinghas been a feature of the development literature since the 1950s. The approachprovides those studying transitional and newly democratising states with a set ofcriteria for monitoring change and progress and for building institutional andpolicy frameworks, while at the same time acknowledging the impact of con-straining legacies from the immediate past as well as cultural constraints.However,the notion of building national capacity to deal with development issues, as wellas the specific notion of ‘environmental capacity building’, gained momentum atthe UN Conference on Environment and Development held at Rio in 1992,and more generally around discussions of sustainability and globalisation(Grindle, 1997).

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) definesenvironmental capacity as ‘a society’s ability to identify and solve environmentalproblems’ (OECD, 1994, p. 8). Accidents and natural resource endowment not-withstanding, capacity is determined and shaped by political actors and theirdecisions, the dimensions and appropriateness of policy and availability of tech-nical knowledge and expertise. In his discussion of the factors limiting a state’senvironmental capacity, Martin Janicke includes ‘lack of ecological, technologicalor administrative knowledge, lack of material or legal resources, the weakness ofenvironmental organisations or institutions in relation to vested interests’ ( Janicke,2002, p. 1). Analyses of a state’s capacity tend to focus on the quality of publicsector human resources, non-governmental organisations and state or quasi-stateinstitutions (VanDeveer and Dabelko, 2001, p. 20). The environmental capacity ofa particular country is not static: new issues and problems, plus the availability ofnew technology and approaches can alter the assessment of a country’s ability andsuccess in dealing with environmental issues. Moreover, the focus of capacitybuilding can shift from one ‘site’ to another, with a country deemed to havedeveloped sufficient capacity in some aspects of environmental management andyet not in others (VanDeveer and Dabelko, 2001, p. 22).

Proponents argue that it is important not to reduce the dimensions of the conceptto the formal policy process, legislation and the role of governments. The OECDhas cautioned against trying to explain the failure of environmental policy solelyin terms of the wrong policy or the use of inappropriate regulatory instruments(OECD, 1992). Indeed, by far the greatest virtue of the capacity concept is thestress placed on the objective limitations to successful environmental interven-tion. The approach places emphasis on the ‘complex interaction of influences’rather than on ‘a single isolated factor, or a favourite instrument ... or a single typeof actor, condition or institution’ (Janicke, 2002, p. 5). In other words, analysis ofcapacity must look not just at the weaknesses of institutions, but also at the causesof incapacity that may include the absence of shared objectives or economic and



social constraints on individuals within key organisations. Capacity is thereforedetermined not so much by the actors themselves, but by the structural contextin which they operate. Similarly, capacity building should not be about installingpolicies that may have worked elsewhere and are deemed to be best practice inWest European states or the US, without considering the context to which theyare being transferred. As Stacy VanDeveer and Geoffrey Dabelko observe, ‘whenefforts to build capacity fail, they often do so because of a lack of domesticconcern in the recipient country about the policy objective ... If technicalassistance programs fail, it is likely to be the fault of program design, not the faultof recipients’ (VanDeveer and Dabelko, 2001, p. 20).

The capacity-building framework thus incorporates aspects of the two maintheoretical approaches to studying environmental activism – the political oppor-tunity structure approach (Kitschelt, 1986;Kriesi, 1995) and resource mobilisation(Tilly, 1978; Zald and McCarthy, 1987). As a framework of analysis it seems toprovide an extensive and far-reaching set of criteria for explaining the constraintson successful environmental management and sustainable development, as well asproviding a theoretical basis for mapping change across a wide spectrum ofvariables. The capacity frame thus seems to pay heed to both structure and agencyand is heralded as particularly useful in the context of post-authoritarian politicaldevelopment.

Yet in practice environmental capacity building and development initiatives tendto be overtly short-term in their focus and pay little heed to sustainable devel-opment and structural contexts. Capacity-building efforts tend to adopt a tech-nocratic language and be concerned with the completion of discrete short-termprojects and their implementation, or with ensuring common environmentalstandards in the context of foreign investment, current consumption, energy useand predictions of growth derived from G8 states. As Ambuj Sagar and Stacy-VanDeveer observe,what is invariably absent from discussions of capacity buildingis a sense of strengthening a society’s ‘capacity to recognise, analyse and defineenvironmental problems and their causes’ (VanDeveer and Sagar, 2005,p. 16). They conclude that ‘activities targeted purely towards assisting countries inthe completion of specific tasks, or moving towards short-term goals, may notonly fail to build local capacity, but may actually be counter-productive’(VanDeveer and Sagar, 2005, p. 264). The emphasis placed on building capacityfor the completion of discrete short-term projects encourages a segmentedconceptualisation of environmental problems and issues, and detracts attentionaway from developing sustainable processes towards measuring tangible out-comes. This has in fact encouraged some critics to reject ‘capacity building’ infavour of ‘capacity development’ to emphasise the longer-term developmentaspect rather than short-term objectives (Sagar and VanDeveer, 2005).

Regardless of the terminology used, most capacity development programmesinvolve either building the capacity of donor agencies to help in the implemen-tation of environmental programmes abroad, or funding projects to build capacity

634 ADAM FAGAN


in recipient countries. In the first case, this involves integrating environmentalconsiderations into donor programmes and developing the skills base of the staffin the agency. In terms of assistance to recipient countries, emphasis is placed onbuilding expertise in the fields of environmental economics and law, and devel-oping monitoring tools. This tends to be top-down assistance, such as buildingplanning and administrative capacity in ministries. It also places great emphasis ondeveloping the role of NGOs in policy fora, as providers of scientific knowledgeand as vehicles for data collection.

In its 1999 review of capacity development for the environment (CDE) efforts,the OECD observed that most programmes had realised only limited success(OECD,1995). The reasons for this were largely to do with the conceptualisationof capacity held by donor agencies. Rather than top-down initiatives basedaround discrete projects decided on by development agencies, the OECD urgeddonors to:

(1) Recognise, analyse and help define environmental problems and theircauses.

(2) Encourage joint decision and management processes (i.e. not imposed bydonors).

(3) Locate local initiatives in the context of global implementation capacity.

In an attempt to emphasise the importance of the social processes that need tooccur for successful implementation, as well as the need for problems andsolutions to be defined and identified locally, and also to shift the focus of capacitydevelopment away from recipient states simply being trained to implementinternationally established environmental policy objectives, VanDeveer and Sagardefine capacity as consisting of three overlapping categories:

(1) Capacity to recognise, analyse and help define environmental problems andtheir causes.

(2) Capacity to decide jointly on appropriate management processes.(3) Implementation capacity. (VanDeveer and Sagar, 2005, p. 265)

Capacity initiatives are invariably built on the tacit assumption that there is perfectcapacity in the North, and that Southern states must learn everything from the‘successful’ Northern experience (Hoksbergen, 2005, p. 19). The embeddedassumption that within recipient states there is no existing capacity, and thateverything has to be built from scratch, is particularly contentious with regard topost-socialist states, where an important legacy of socialism is the existence ofsignificant scientific and technical knowledge (Carmin and Jehlicka, 2005).

Indeed, many of the criticisms levelled at capacity development for the environ-ment programmes are the same as those directed at transnational NGO devel-opment programmes more generally. Namely, these are waste and duplicity ofresources, disregard for local knowledge and a lack of rootedness or sustainability;capacity-building assistance, like all donor aid, emphasises short-term projects, the



successful completion of which can be used to demonstrate value added and themeasurable impact of donor intervention.3 Despite the rhetoric of sustainabilityand an explicit commitment to building long-term and durable capacity inrecipient states, most donor agencies focus on short-term objectives in order tosatisfy their own donors.4

The practical and operational limitations being described here are largely symp-tomatic of the particular interpretation of development that underpins this formof assistance. The core assumption of all capacity-building aid is that the inter-vention of donors and multilateral agencies (such as theWorld Bank, the Organi-sation for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE], the OECD, the UN) willdeliver institutional and legislative convergence with the practices and norms ofthe North, and that this will be enabling and positive for recipient states. Forinstance, in Helmut Weidner and Martin Janicke’s comparative study of envi-ronmental capacity in seventeen countries, multilateral and bilateral support forenvironmental protection in developing states is accepted uncritically as a positiveforce (Weidner and Janicke, 2002, p. 433). No serious consideration is given towhether the dependency of environmental NGOs on foreign donors is a sus-tainable development strategy, or if the imposition of legislative frameworks orpatterns of institutional behaviour borrowed from West European states and theUS will affect levels of implementation. Moreover, there is apparently no criticalengagement with the prospect that imported knowledge and scientific rationaleswill clash with ‘local’ knowledge and interpretations of environmental risk. Aconstructivist critique of the transfer of ‘new’ knowledge as the basis for buildingpolicy and institutional capacity would immediately highlight the subjectivity ofsuch knowledge and the potential antagonism between the established scientificcommunity within the recipient state and the newly imported knowledge(Berger and Luckmann, 1966).

This contention is really part of a more overarching criticism of capacity-buildingassistance, namely, the reluctance of scholars to accept, or at least engage criticallywith, the notion that the intervention they advocate is not apolitical and merelytechnical, but forms a key part of what critics refer to as ‘post-conditionality’,a less overt, but no less contentious form of intervention that seeks to develop‘good governance’ through ‘partnership’ and cross-sectoral participation ratherthan by imposing structural adjustment on donor-dependent regimes as wasthe case in the 1980s and 1990s (Harrison, 2004, p. 71).

From such a perspective environmental capacity assistance offered by bilateraldonors to post-socialist states appears to be a salient manifestation of interventiondesigned to transform state power in a not dissimilar way to that which hasoccurred in the developing world, whereby national governments have becomeinextricably linked with networks of transnational actors. Graham Harrison refersto this as the ‘governance state’, where global networks of governance (includingNGOs, private companies, donors, international financial institutions) havebecome indivisible from nation states (Harrison, 2004, pp. 23–6). The impact of

636 ADAM FAGAN


such change is, regardless of the political intention or will of individual politicians,the disempowerment of the state and its capacity to regulate and control tran-snational corporations (TNCs) and to mediate the impact of the conditionalityimposed by international financial institutions.5

At the core of capacity building is a structural-functionalist notion that incre-mental technical and administrative change – better policies, more openness,greater technological and ecological know-how and communication – willultimately deliver to post-socialist states levels of increase in capacity similar tothose witnessed in West European states over the past three decades. Again,there is seemingly no recognition that the ‘new’ knowledge may well clash withthe old, or that changes in institutional structures, new legislation or the develop-ment of newly constructed networks of expertise do not necessarily reflect, norwill they bring about, changes in the underlying structure of power. This isparticularly true in the context of post-socialist regime change in South-EasternEurope and the Balkans, where imported institutions and regulatory frameworksmay not be embedded, and where the legacy of authoritarian rule lingers interms of the behaviour of both officials and social movement actors.

Environmental Capacity Building and Post-socialist Europe

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of environmental capacity-building initia-tives delivered by transnational donor agencies across post-socialist Europe is theembedded assumption that liberalisation and democratisation, once established asa consequence of free elections, will follow a linear course, and that this willdeliver improvements in environmental capacity. In other words, the necessaryshift from what Janicke terms ‘formal’ institutionalisation to ‘substantive’ institu-tionalisation, or from ‘apparent capacity’ to ‘effective capacity’, is inextricably tiedto the assumption of linear consolidation (Janicke, 1997, p. 10).

The reality of post-socialist Europe beyond the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Polandand Hungary is, at worst, stalled democratisation, or, at best, non-linear develop-ment. Beyond holding relatively free and fair elections, Serbia, Montenegro,Bosnia-Herzegovina,Macedonia and Albania have yet fully to establish and legallyenshrine the procedures and institutions that would enable citizens and organi-sations to participate in policy making or seek redress. In terms of transition andregime change, these states are not at the consolidation stage that, for example, theCzech Republic had reached by the mid-1990s when environmental capacity-building initiatives were introduced by the EU and other donors. In BiH, notionsof citizen participation in decision-making processes, freedom and the availabilityof information, and the notion of officials being both accountable and operatingaccording to a legally enshrined due process, have yet to be constitutionallyestablished, let alone procedurally entrenched. Capacity-building initiatives areimplicitly, if not explicitly, based on assumptions of a functioning marketeconomy, a state administration equipped and empowered to perform certain



regulatory functions and at least a framework of trilateral governance in whichNGOs, the state and the market interact.

Most environmental capacity-building assistance in post-socialist states is drivenby and bound to the EU accession and stability agendas. The most obviousconsequence of this is a sense of piecemeal initiatives designed, it is hoped, tokick-start as many of the processes and functions deemed necessary to delivereffective environmental management as quickly as possible without fullyacknowledging that, for example, the impact of a new piece of legislation ordirective is directly determined by the effectiveness of institutions such as NGOs,scientific institutes or agencies responsible for implementation. While it isacknowledged that ‘capacity building efforts can be focused on any number of“sites”: government bodies, NGOs and civil society ... independent unions,scientific and technical communities’ (VanDeveer and Dabelko, 2001, p. 20), suchsegmentation runs the risk of downplaying the extent to which organisationalcapacity, levels of political openness, technological know-how and legislativechange are either contingent or dependent variables.

However, perhaps the most fundamental contention, and one with specificrelevance to the role of the EU in post-socialist Europe, is the evident discon-nection between the environmental capacity programmes that donors advocateand their concurrent commitment to the promotion of growth and consumption.Recent studies of environmental capacity in post-socialist Europe now acknowl-edge that a decade and a half since the revolutions of 1989, the massive increasein consumption that has occurred as a consequence of marketisation, rather thanlegacies from the socialist period, is the main, or most significant threat tosustainable development (Andersson, 2002, p. 348; Caddy and Vari, 2002, p. 220;Fagan, 2001, pp. 589–606). Large-scale infrastructure projects funded and sup-ported by the EU, such as the Corridor 5c motorway network linking Hungary,Bosnia and Croatia, suggest that the Commission does not see the concurrence ofmeasures pursued by the EU to promote growth and environmental protection asanomalous.Rather, professional NGOs are seen as functionaries for mediating theimpact of high consumption, and as endemic features of West European statesthat post-socialist Europe must replicate if they wish to modernise and gain entryto the EU.

Notwithstanding the criticisms raised above, it must be acknowledged thatenvironmental capacity-building initiatives in the more successful and relativelyprosperous CEE states have been successful in terms of establishing new legal andregulatory frameworks in line with EU norms, and in developing the profession-alism and expertise of environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs)(Fagan, 2001, pp. 589–606). While capacity-building initiatives may well haveresulted in the displacement of ‘old’ knowledge, or at least the transformation ofindigenous epistemic communities in the CEE states that joined the EU in 2004,the relative stability of the state and the existence of porous and relatively open

638 ADAM FAGAN


political institutions have presumably enabled the incorporation and absorptionof new networks of knowledge and policy actors.

However, moving beyond CEE to the Western Balkans, to states suffering fromwhat Thomas Caruthers terms ‘feckless pluralism’, in which ‘there are significantamounts of political freedom, regular elections, and alternation of power betweengenuinely different political groupings’, but where ‘democracy remains shallowand troubled’ (Caruthers, 2002, pp. 9–10), environmental capacity-building ini-tiatives pursued by the EU and other donors are likely to encounter a series ofadditional problems that will mitigate their effectiveness. In a climate of less openand porous institutions and processes it is likely to prove much harder to mediatethe disjuncture between ‘old’ and ‘new’ knowledge. It is also likely that thosepromoting environmental capacity-building assistance and working to implement‘new’ knowledge will be more inclined to ignore the less visible and organised‘old’ epistemic community.

The particular context of the Bosnian environmental movement highlights thecontradictions of using the concept of capacity building to develop patterns ofWestern political interaction and associational behaviour in the context of apartial democracy in which the authority of the state remains contested andpartial. Or, more specifically, where so-called democratic reforms have beenpursued in the context of post-conflict reconstruction and what some criticsdismiss as ‘liberal imperialism’ (Ignatieff, 2003). In such a political context, wheredemocratic processes remain undeveloped or simply non-operative, the impact ofcapacity assistance is more likely to be the displacement of indigenous networksand knowledge communities in the quest to construct fragile new institutionsthat have little or no legitimacy, are entirely dependent on donor revenue and thatfunction in a political vacuum.

Case Study: Environmental Capacity Building inBosnia-Herzegovina

The second part of this article will analyse efforts on behalf of internationaldonors to develop environmental capacity, and the capacity of NGOs in particu-lar, in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analysis will seek to test both theclaims of those advocating the effectiveness of capacity-building assistance andintervention, as well as the various critical perspectives raised above; for example,the types of organisation that capacity assistance empowers, the objectives ofdonors and the focus of capacity assistance, plus the extent to which donoragendas are compatible with the issue agendas emerging from within the Bosnianmovement and from civil society at large, are critical questions to be addressedthrough the empirical analysis.

The research, which took place between March 2004 and January 2006,6 is basedprimarily on qualitative semi-structured interviews with environmental NGOs



that have been the recipients of capacity assistance and with donor agenciescurrently operating in BiH. In order to evaluate the existing capacity of envi-ronmental NGOs, and to analyse the impact of capacity assistance, a detailedoverview of the Bosnian environmental movement is provided, based on quali-tative semi-structured interviews with movement activists and NGO represen-tatives, including organisations intent on gaining access to policy-making fora,as well as more enmeshed community-based organisations working on localcampaigns. The sample survey of organisations included NGOs operating in largeurban centres (Sarajevo, Mostar, Tuzla, Banja Luka) and local organisations insmaller towns and villages and rural areas (Doboj, Zenica,Visegrad). The analysiswill begin with a brief summary of the Dayton legacy and the political andconstitutional structure that has been established since 1995.

The Political Context: The Legacy of Dayton

The political configuration of BiH is a legacy of the 1992–5 war and the Daytonpeace settlement which formally ended the conflict in November 1995.Althoughostensibly a single state, political power and authority rest with the two separateentities, the Bosniak (Muslim)-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska. Bosnia isessentially a consociational confederation in which the three collectivities(Bosniak, Serb and Croat) are given primacy over individual citizens (Lijphart,1984, chs 1 and 2). The overarching Bosnian state is confederal in character,exerting virtually no authority; the federating units (the two entities) rather thanthe federal government are constitutionally empowered (Bose, 2002, ch. 5).7

Although substantial power rests in the hands of the entity-level governments, thediffusion of power in the Federation is more opaque, as the territory is dividedfurther into twelve cantons delineated to reflect ethnic divisions within the entity.Each canton elects its own government (and until recently its own primeminister), the aim being to allow political representation for the majority ethnicgroup within a specific territorial area. The fragmentation does not, however, endat cantonal level. Substantial power is then devolved to local municipalities, againin an attempt to maximise political representation of ethnic communities. Theresult is a political quagmire in which responsibility and accountability becomeblurred and overlap, with much confusion about the validity of legislation acrossthe two entities and the status of state-level decisions versus entity-level laws.

Both critics and advocates of the Dayton architecture acknowledge that politicalpower and influence in BiH rests with the international community in the formof the Office of the High Representative (OHR) (currently Miroslav Lajcák, aSlovak diplomat, and previously Paddy Ashdown, the former British politician).The formal role of the OHR is to uphold democratic governance and intervenewherever and whenever the conditions of the peace accord are transgressed. Tocritics, this represents a colonial power structure,which permanently weakens andinfantilises the Bosnian government at all levels (Belloni, 2000, p. 2). For others,the presence of the OHR and the international community is a transitory period

640 ADAM FAGAN


designed to help nurture democratic institutions and,‘on balance, has done moregood than harm’ (Bose, 2005, p. 322). However, as David Chandler points out, thereality of power in BiH is that:

in ten years since Dayton, not one piece of substantial legislation has been devised,ratified and implemented by Bosnian politicians and civil servants ... the lack ofpolitical autonomy for Bosnian representatives, and of political accountability forBosnian citizens, is possibly the most remarkable feature of the Dayton settlement(Chandler, 2005b, p. 308).

The most remarkable recent development has been the sustained increase in thepower and influence of the EU. From initially being involved in the implemen-tation of civilian aspects of the Dayton agreement, the EU has, since 2000,assumed much broader influence. The somewhat vague objectives of Daytonhave been largely replaced by the much more specific objectives of the EUaccession agenda. In other words, the original aim of gradually transferring powerfrom the OHR to Bosnian politicians and the public has been eclipsed by thetransfer of power to the EU via the Directorate for European Integrations (DEI),which has ‘in effect, become the key executive body in BiH’ (Chandler, 2005a,p. 343).

The impact on environmental activists and on environmental management ofsuch a power structure is profound. A central normative tenet of environmentalcapacity is integrative capacity and inter-sectoral planning across policy areas. Yetany efforts to ensure that environmental considerations are incorporated withinpolicy and planning decisions in BiH are frustrated by the fact that decisionmaking for various policy areas takes place across the various tiers of government;for example, planning decisions concerning road building have been devolved tothe cantonal level, whereas responsibility for forestry and utilities is dividedbetween municipal, cantonal and state-level governments.While the prospect ofdealing with different tiers of government is not in itself an insurmountableproblem for environmental NGOs, the lack of clarity and openness regardingwhere responsibility lies for decision making, issuing of permits and licences,regulation and implementation is identified by all organisations as a seriousimpediment.

International donors (most notably the EU) place significant emphasis on gettingNGOs to interact with local officials and government, and to develop theirexpertise so that they can make an input in the policy process. Although alaudable strategy, the obfuscation of power and responsibility acts as a significantconstraint on the work of ENGOs and frustrates their capacity to interacteffectively with government. Somewhat paradoxically, ENGOs are impeded onthe one hand by the absence of a state-level centralised environmental agency, andon the other by the strong centralising norm within decision making, which is alegacy of the socialist period. Added to this is the role of the OHR and, morerecently, the EU delegation to BiH, both of which exert far more power andinfluence than any tier of government, be it state, federal, cantonal or local.



While some municipal officials have come to recognise that ENGOs can provideservices and expertise, this has tended to occur only in the Federation and withinlarge urban areas such as Tuzla, Mostar and Sarajevo.8 In such cases the relation-ship is based on mutual weakness and dependency rather than on ENGOsexerting influence over policy and decision making. Moreover, where municipalleaders have sought to introduce environmental protection and fuse relations withENGOs, for example Sarajevo municipality, such efforts are undermined by thefailure of either the cantonal or federal government to devolve effective regula-tory authority or adequately to clarify the division of responsibility.

The relationship between ENGOs and local political elites is further complicatedby the absence of financial autonomy and devolved budgeting at the local level.Raising revenue through taxation is a huge problem in BiH, and the notion oflocal taxation revenue being ploughed back into communities for environmentalregeneration in particular, is non-existent (Pugh,2005,pp.142–55). In the absenceof financial autonomy or revenue, local government and municipalities relyentirely on either the state or the EU to fund environmental regeneration projects.

An optimistic interpretation sees ENGOs as eventually coaxing governmentofficials into a relationship based on deliberation and consultation, with environ-mentalists gradually shifting from being apolitical service providers towards per-forming a greater advocacy role. However, such an outcome is contingent uponpower being transferred from the OHR and the EU to domestic political elites.A more negative assessment would see NGOs operating within a power vacuum,becoming quasi-corporatist service providers in the context of a bankrupt anddisempowered state (Deacon and Stubbs, 1998, pp. 99–115). It could be arguedthat there is little long-term benefit in developing the advocacy capacity ofNGOs without first dealing with the disempowerment of the elites with whomNGOs are being trained to interact.

The Bosnian Environmental Movement: An Overview

Concern for the environment among international donors operating in BiH isrelatively recent. Assistance in the immediate aftermath of the war focused onemergency relief, delivering basic provision to ensure the survival of citizens anddisplaced communities, or the provision of grants for international NGOsworking on rebuilding communities and activities designed to heal ethnic divi-sions. Understandably perhaps, the environment did not feature as an issue in theimmediate post-Dayton period. Project grants for environmental issues haveoccurred largely in response to the EU’s agenda, and the emphasis the Commis-sion places on environmental regulation as a criterion for future accession.

Although the range of environmental capacity-building initiatives undertaken bydonor agencies can be and often is quite varied, the main emphasis of transna-tional donor assistance projects across the post-socialist region tends to be onsupporting ENGOs and the development of environmental movement networks.

642 ADAM FAGAN


This is certainly the case in BiH where donors such as the EU and United StatesAgency for International Development (USAID) have directed a significantproportion of their aid towards funding ENGOs to develop information net-works and build policy expertise.9

In some respects Bosnian ENGOs can be described as being at a similar stage ofdevelopment as their Central and Eastern European counterparts were at the startof the 1990s.Apart from the conservation youth organisation Gorans, which wasestablished during the socialist period under the auspices of the Communist partyof Yugoslavia, all the ENGOs in BiH are new, having been established during thewar, or in the period since 1995.

Organisations tend to be run by a few volunteers, usually university students,whomay be involved in several different organisations. Environmentalism has notplayed a particular role in Bosnian politics and is generally regarded, by bothpoliticians and the public, as being of low political significance. Indeed, environ-mental NGOs have emerged as part of the wider growth in NGOs during thewar and the post-war periods, largely as a consequence of the availability of donormoney and civil society development projects, rather than as a direct response tospecific ecological issues.

Even in cases where an organisation has emerged in direct response to a particularlocal problem, the realities of funding and dependency on foreign donors meanthat the issue agenda of the organisation quickly shifts away from the local contexttowards the current issue priorities of the EU,the Regional Environmental Center(REC)10 or the Heinrich Böll Foundation.11 This gives rise to a sense of ENGOsas being temporary; the majority of the organisations listed by the InternationalCouncil for Voluntary Associations (ICVA) (a Bosnian-run organisation thatsupports and helps develop the NGO sector) in its 2001/2 directory or on thecurrent REC database no longer operate or exist. Although according to the RECdatabase the number of ENGOs has risen from an estimated twelve in 1997 to overtwo hundred in 2005,12 many of these are merely registered entities that are notactive and may involve only one or two people.Organisations established solely toaccess project grants will then disappear once the funding has ended. Of the 200listed ENGOs, at least half are not exclusively environmental organisations, buthave been established by other NGOs working with displaced persons, children’shealth or other assistance issues in order to access ‘green’ grants.

Furthermore, of the organisations that are exclusively environmental in theircampaign focus, a substantial proportion are not strictly non-governmental in sofar as they have been established by employees of government agencies andscientific institutes as a means of accessing foreign funding. This is a phenomenonthat has been observed in other parts of South-Eastern Europe and the formerUSSR and has become a recognised feature of post-socialist development(Mandel, 2002, pp. 279–99).Accessing donor grants is a successful and often theonly way for cash-starved institutes to survive in the absence of state funding.



The most notable Bosnian example of this phenomenon is the Centre forEnvironmentally Sustainable Development (CESD), which operates out of theHydro-Engineering Institute of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Sarajevo,and is therefore governmental rather than non-governmental. Staff from the Institutehave established the organisation in order to access EU and other donorrevenue, and the organisation has become one of the most successful and promi-nent environmental organisations in the country. The complex applicationprocess for EU projects presents less of a challenge for the academics andstatisticians involved in CESD than for other environmental NGOs. AlthoughCESD does work with communities to develop participation in environmentalimpact assessment (EIA), the main focus of the organisation is advising govern-ment, policy-makers and industry on cleaner technology programmes in orderto meet environmental standards. Their interpretation of the role of environ-mental organisations is as technical experts assisting and advising governmentand industry.13 CESD has attracted the bulk of donor funding directed towardsenvironmental regeneration in BiH, including money from the Austrian gov-ernment, the EU, REC, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)and various other European and American foundations. Unlike other BosnianENGOs, CESD has the capacity to run a number of projects concurrently,drawing on researchers, postgraduate students and other employees of the Insti-tute. Since 2003, CESD has obtained eight EU-funded project grants, more thanany other organisation in the country.14

Building the Capacity of Environmental NGOs in BiH

Any assessment of the Bosnian environmental movement, whether from activists,donors or academics, tends to make immediate reference to a lack of capacity.The environmental sector is seen as particularly weak and undeveloped, signifi-cantly below the average for NGOs operating in other sectors.15 However, it isperhaps more appropriate to talk about a lack of capacities, in order to capture thedifferent developmental needs of environmental movement organisations andactivists. Such needs range from the organisational and administrative, to whatmight be termed ‘political capacity’, the ability to mobilise political and legalresources to challenge policy decisions and infrastructure schemes such as motor-ways, dams or quarrying. It is also vital to distinguish between ‘policy’ capacity and‘political’ capacity: the former referring to an ability to contribute to policydebates, while the latter refers to an ability to contest and campaign.

When the Regional Environmental Center,one of the main international organi-sations supporting the development of ENGOs in BiH, identifies lack of capacityas being the main problem faced by the environmental movement, the inferenceis that there is a lack of infrastructural, organisational and managerial know-howamong environmental groups, plus the absence of basic resources.16 It is estimatedthat less than 10 per cent of ENGOs have the capacity to stage national-levelcampaigns, with the majority of organisations are only capable of implementing

644 ADAM FAGAN


and managing small projects of between €10,000 and €20,000.17 More than 50per cent of organisations lack a computer or access to the internet, and do nothave English-speaking staff (seen as critical for applying for grants and dealingwith international donor organisations). In December 2005, when this researchfinished, only three of the ENGOs registered with the REC (Ekotim,YRBL andGreen Neretva) had an updated and functioning website.According to Ekonet, anelectronic as well as actual network of ENGOs in BiH, there are probably fewerthan ten organisations in the country that could potentially sustain a largenational campaign, that have a core permanent staff and a steady flow of fund-ing.18 Even in such cases the organisations are entirely dependent on projectgrants and remain small operations. Perhaps the most successful environmentalcampaigning organisation, the Young Researchers of Banja Luka (YRBL), havediscovered that despite the lists of environmental NGOs supposedly operatingand in receipt of project grants,

when you come to do something [a joint or national campaign], there are less than10 organisations ... lots of NGOs don’t even have a management team – nostructure, no strategic plan, they just work ad hoc, from project to project, or on aparticular action.19

The few NGOs that have developed their campaigning strategies and madeprogress in developing their internal management structures are then confrontedwith the problem that they cannot find reliable and equally developed partnerorganisations with whom to work.20

Bosnian environmental NGOs undoubtedly lack capacity on all levels.21

However, capacity-building assistance offered by donors tends to focus exclusivelyon building managerial or organisational capacity rather than on enablingENGOs such as YRBL or Ekotim to engage politically, or to challenge environ-mentally contentious planning decisions as questionable. While all environmentalorganisations interviewed for this research needed more staff and equipment,and could certainly benefit from assistance with organisational development andmanagement, from a civil society development perspective there was also anevident lack of capacity to engage politically. For example, there is currently noenvironmental NGO in BiH working actively on opposing the construction ofthe contentious Corridor 5c motorway, which, when completed, will run fromHungary, through Bosnia-Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Mostar), to Croatia. Sections ofthe motorway have already been completed (ring-road around Sarajevo) anddespite the obvious ecological implications, there has been virtually no campaign-ing on behalf of environmentalists. More revealing perhaps is the fact that whenENGOs have been asked to comment on aspects of the proposals as part of EIAprocesses, none of the main organisations have done so. When asked,both Ekotimand YRBL claimed they were too busy applying for EU project grants and weretied up with completing other project applications at the time.22

Most capacity-building initiatives offered by donors focus on enabling organisa-tions to raise revenue and manage a grant project. Indicators of capacity and



sustainability are typically whether an organisation has the ability to apply forproject funding, and whether it has a track record of managing a grant andcompleting a project.23 Critics argue that the civil society sector in BiH is notin fact ready or sufficiently developed for the kind of assistance being offered,and that the ability of an organisation to apply for project funding is notnecessarily a measure of developed capacity. It is argued that empoweringENGOs involves more basic provision and training to support local organisa-tions that, in many cases, are barely operative (Sampson, 1996). A further claimis that the emphasis on project grants as the basis for developing capacity merelygenerates growth in the number of organisations that have no roots in civilsociety or strategic plan for the future. This then leads to further fragmentationof the movement. In the environmental sector, the current reality is that two orthree ENGOs which have built up knowledge of how to complete applicationsin English obtain most of the aid and benefit from the assistance. For instance,YRBL do not have a problem getting EU grants, not because they have par-ticularly developed capacity, but due to the fact that there is hardly any com-petition from other NGOs. Viktor Bjelic, the organisation’s spokesperson,argues that such a system fails also to cater for the more established organisa-tions, which require more bespoke training. Dependent on university students asvolunteers, lacking a computer and unable to purchase the required expertise,the majority of registered environmental organisations cannot begin to con-struct the sort of extensive application for funding required by all the maindonors, nor can they demonstrate any kind of successful project history or hopeto obtain the requisite match funding.

The EU Commission delegation to BiH, which is now the largest donor in BiHand the main source of funding for ENGOs, readily acknowledges that it hasdifficulty in allocating the resources designated for NGOs and that it ends upawarding projects to the same organisations in each round. The applicationprocess for such funds is extremely complicated. It involves the applicant organi-sation having a basic knowledge of project psycho-management tools. NGOs arerequired to submit a log frame, a logic matrix identifying how the overallobjectives of the proposed project would further EU national objectives for BiH.The specific objectives of the project must then be identified with reference tosustainable development of the organisation and the methodology for measuringoutcomes and identifying indicators of achievement.Applicants are requested toidentify quantitative and qualitative baseline assessments against which the EUwill measure success on completion of the project.

In the recent network-building round the quality of the applications was con-sidered so poor that out of a potential €7 million, only €1.5 million could beallocated. The local delegation has concluded that the process is too complex formost local NGOs and that there is a lack of capacity to develop the kind ofprojects that the EU wishes to support. However, the solution to this is seen interms of providing more training for NGOs to develop the specific technical skills

646 ADAM FAGAN


required to complete grant applications, rather than to reassess the EU’s notion of‘capacity’ and organisational development.24

Paolo Scialla, the team coordinator for the Democratic Stabilisation Programmeof the Delegation of the European Commission to BiH, concedes that this is anextremely difficult process. He acknowledges that ‘[such] complex managementtools are not easy for people who have been using them for years’. It is recognisedthat the reason funds repeatedly go to a few larger NGOs with whom the EU hasworked over the past three to four years rather than newer local organisations isto do with the complexity of the process and the insistence that NGOs obtainmatch funding.25 Invariably this rules out smaller NGOs and benefits those thathave established contacts with large international donors. In other words, anNGO has to be pretty well established and connected to gain access to EU funds.

Capacity Building and Local Environmental Networks

The limited reach of capacity-building assistance and the narrow definition heldby donor agencies of what constitutes ‘capacity’ are revealed from the perspectiveof enmeshed environmental networks operating at the local level, away from thenational political arena, and engaged in politically contentious campaigns tochallenge directly planning decisions or the absence of effective regulation.Environmental activism at this level is arguably a more genuine expression of civilsociety than newly established elite-level NGOs. Yet it is precisely such networksof enmeshed environmental activists, often with their origins in the socialistperiod,which experience the most difficulty in accessing foreign donor assistanceeither because they cannot break into the elite of ENGOs that already receivedonor assistance and can demonstrate track records, or because the assistance theyrequire is not offered by donors such as USAID, the EU or DFID.26

An example of such a grass-roots network is Grupa za Podrska (Support GroupGreen),27 which emerged during 2004 in response to the construction of anaccess road through the Rakitnica canyon in south-west Bosnia-Herzegovina.28

SGG faced several difficulties in its attempts to discover who had made thedecision to allow the road to be constructed. Activists were forestalled by theconfusion surrounding the political jurisdiction and responsibility of the varioustiers of government, and the deliberate flouting of political processes by politi-cians and officials; neither the cantonal government nor the local administrationwere prepared to take responsibility. Ultimately it required the intervention of theOHR in order to initiate an environmental audit assessment, even though this isa statutory legal requirement.

Most importantly perhaps, the case of the SGG network also identified the extentto which both scientific expertise and campaigning know-how are availablelocally and can be mobilised on the basis of professional ties, loyalties andconnections dating back to the socialist period. For example, drawing on personal



networks and expertise, SGG activists were able to put together detailed reportson the environmental impact of the canyon road, and to propose alternativeschemes to provide access without causing ecological damage. In terms of‘capacity’ assistance, SGG have in fact required different, more nuanced supportfrom donors, namely revenue to enable activists to pursue a political and legalchallenge. The network did not require training in managerial know-how andcoaching on how to complete a grant application form – they did not seek toestablish a formal NGO, or to professionalise their activities. What they soughtwere resources to fund a rather conventional campaign based around mobilisingsupport and publicising the corrupt practices that had occurred.

Not surprisingly, SGG has not been able to access donor assistance, at least notdirectly. When activists contacted REC and asked for assistance with the cam-paign they were refused on the basis that this was a ‘political campaign’ and RECas an international organisation has to remain ‘politically neutral’. Yet REC doesgive money to the federal ministry and has employed the minister and deputyminister of the environment as advisers. REC has also supported other ENGOs– Ekotim and Fondeko – but in the context of less controversial campaigns thatinvolve partnership and cooperation with the authorities rather than directconfrontation.

The SGG network has been primarily constrained by corrupt decision makingand a lack of transparency and accountability, and by the absence of legalframeworks governing the availability of information. Although an EIA processdid take place in response to pressure from the OHR, the federation-levelministry responsible for environmental protection decided, in July 2004, topermit the canyon road to be completed, but withheld information regarding itsdecision for 25 days. Bosnian law states that citizens have 30 days in which toappeal after a decision is announced. This gave SGG only five days to lodge anappeal, which they were unable to do.

Conclusion

The perspective of the Bosnian environmental movement confirms several of thecriticisms that have already been levelled at environmental capacity-buildingassistance initiatives in post-socialist states and beyond. However, what is revealedspecifically by this research is the extent to which it is vital to distinguish betweendifferent capacities, and to acknowledge the extent to which donor assistanceprivileges the building of organisational and managerial ‘capacity’ over politicaland campaigning ‘capacity’. While the former ‘capacity’ is arguably no lessimportant than the latter, the ability of ENGOs to mobilise political resources anddefend marginalised communities in the face of planning decisions and the anticsof investors is the measure of civil society development. What the perspective alsoillustrates is the extent to which capacity assistance delivered by donors tends tobenefit a narrow elite of organisations, not necessarily non-governmental, nor

648 ADAM FAGAN


those engaged in advocacy on behalf of citizens or community interests. Rather,the overriding aim appears to be the consolidation of ‘new’ knowledge andexpertise that will enable effective regulation and the harmonisation of localstandards with EU norms in anticipation of possible future accession. In sum,despite the rhetoric, environmental capacity building is primarily concerned withpolicy and knowledge and benefits civil society only indirectly and incidentally.

(Accepted: 1 March 2007)

About the AuthorAdam Fagan, Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E14NS, UK; email: [email protected]

Notes1 The notion of an ‘epistemic community’ used in this article draws on Haas’ definition, which defines the concept

as ‘a network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain or issue area ...[sharing] a set of normative and principled beliefs, which provide a value-based rationale for the social actionof community members ... shared causal beliefs ... notions of validity and common policy enterprise’ (Haas, 1992,p. 3).

2 The literature making a case for the continued specificity of post-socialism is quite extensive. See, for example, Hann(2002).

3 The literature critiquing aid and assistance for the development of NGOs and civil society in post-socialist Europeis extensive. See, in particular,Mandel (2002);Wedel (2001);Cellarius and Staddon (2002); Sampson (1996);Quigley(2000).

4 For example, the REC states in its publication Regional Cooperation for Sustainable Development in theWestern Balkans,‘The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) is pleased to support non-governmental organisation (NGO) cooperative projects related to the sustainable development of the westernBalkan region’. However, all projects funded are short term, typically twelve to eighteen months with no option ofextension.

5 There is an extensive literature discussing the disempowerment of Southern states as a consequence of interventionby international financial institutions. For example, see Clapham (1996); Duffield (2001); Hardt and Negri (2000).

6 The research was funded by the British Academy (SG 37329).

7 For a detailed description of the political and institutional architecture of Bosnia-Herzegovina, see Bose (2002,ch. 5).

8 For example, the ENGO Ekotim helping to provide recycling facilities in Sarajevo municipality.

9 Interviews with USAID and EU Delegation to BiH, 4 July 2005.

10 The Regional Environmental Center for CEE is a non-profit organisation working to improve the environmentsof the region. It was established in 1990 by the US and the European Commission. Information on its role in BiHwas obtained from interviews with Inka Sehovic, Information and Grant Manager, Sarajevo, 21 February 2005 andDorde Stefanovic, Banja Luka field office, 7 July 2005.

11 For instance, most of the larger, donor-funded ENGOs work on recycling, water management issues and environ-mental education, all of which are key EU priorities for BiH. However, for many grass-roots activists orcommunity-based organisations the key issues are high dams and the threat posed to conservation areas bydevelopers.

12 Interview with Inka Sehovic, Sarajevo, 21 February 2005.

13 Interviews with Sanda Midzic and Igor Palandzic, CESD (Centre for Environmentally Sustainable Development),Sarajevo, February and July 2005.

14 Information obtained from CESD, but also confirmed with the EU Commission Delegation to BiH.

15 Interview with Viktor Bjelic and Miodrag Dakic,Young Researchers of Banja Luka, Banja Luka, 7 July 2005.

16 Interview with REC, Sarajevo, February 2005; Banja Luka, July 2005.

17 The typical size of an EU micro project is between €60,000 and €80,000.



mailto:[email protected]

18 Interview with Viktor Bjelic, Ekonet/Young Researchers of Banja Luka, February 2005.



21 A stark illustration of the lack of such capacity occurred in July 2005, when several organisations were asked by thestate planning authorities to comment on proposals for an extensive and controversial motorway developmentscheme to run across the country. The two most prominent organisations in the country, YRBL and Ekotim, bothfelt they lacked the resources to make comments by the required deadline and declined to comment.

22 Interviews with Viktor Bjelic and Miodrag Dakic,Young Researchers of Banja Luka, Banja Luka, 7 July 2005;Rijad, Ekotim.

23 Criteria used by the OSCE, USAID, EU and the World Bank for allocating project grants in BiH.

24 Interviews with Paolo Scialla, Delegation of the European commission in BiH, 24 March 2004; Boris Mrak,EU Cards project.

25 Interview with Paolo Scialla, Team co-ordinator,Democratic Stabilization Programme,Delegation of the EuropeanCommission to BiH, Sarajevo, 24 March 2004.

26 Department for International Development (UK).

27 Support Group Green (Grupa za Podrska) was established in April 2004 with the aim of stopping the canyon roadand other environmentally hazardous projects in the region. The coalition is an eclectic mix of organisations,including mountaineering organisations, the Ornithology Society of BiH and caving clubs, all of whom feel affectedby the canyon road construction.

28 The Rakitnica canyon, situated in the south-west of BiH, is one of the last unspoilt areas in Europe and has hadprotected status since 1966. The canyon, which is an 800-metre drop, contains magnificent rock formations and ishome to numerous endangered species. Information on SGG was obtained from several interviews with ThierryJoubert and Tim Clancy (Green Visions, part of the SGG network) and Kenan Muftic (SGG coordinator) duringthe period March 2004–December 2005.

ReferencesAndersson, M. (2002) ‘Poland’, in H. Weidner and M. Janicke (eds), Capacity Building in National Environmental

Policy. Berlin: Springer, pp. 347–74.

Assetto, V. J., Hajba, E. and Mumme, S. (2003) ‘Democratization, Decentralization and Local EnvironmentalPolicy Capacity: Hungary and Mexico’, The Social Science Journal, 40 (2), 249–68.

Belloni, R. (2000) ‘Building Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina’, Human Rights Working Papers, No. 12,January 2000, p. 2. Available from: http://www.du.edu/humanrights/workingpapers/papers/02-belloni-0100.pdf [Accessed 12 October 2006]

Benderly, J. (1997) ‘Feminist Movements In Yugoslavia, 1978–1992’, in M. K. Bokovoy, J. A. Irvine and C. S.Lilly (eds), State–Society Relations inYugoslavia 1945–1992. London: Macmillan, pp. 183–210.

Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Anchor Books.

Bose, S. (2002) Bosnia after Dayton:Nationalist Partition and International Intervention.NewYork:Oxford UniversityPress.

Bose, S. (2005) ‘The Bosnian State a Decade after Dayton’, in D. Chandler (ed.), ‘Peace Without Politics? TenYears of International State-Building in Bosnia’, International Peacekeeping, 12 (3), 322–55.

Caddy, J. and Vari, A. (2002) ‘Hungary’, in H. Weidner and M. Janicke (eds), Capacity Building in NationalEnvironmental Policy. Berlin: Springer, pp. 219–38.

Carmin, J. and Jehlicka, P. (2005) ‘By the Masses or for the Masses? The Transformation of Voluntary Actionin the Czech Union for Nature Protection’, Voluntas, 16 (4), 397–416.

Caruthers, T. (2002) ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, Journal of Democracy, 13 (1), 5–21.

Cellarius, B. A. and Staddon, C. (2002) ‘Environmental Nongovernmental Organizations, Civil Society andDemocratization in Bulgaria’, East European Politics and Societies, 16 (1), 182–222.

Chandler, D. (2005a) ‘From Dayton to Europe’, in D. Chandler (ed.), ‘Peace without Politics? Ten Years ofInternational State-Building in Bosnia’, International Peacekeeping, 12 (3), 336–49.

Chandler, D. (2005b) ‘Introduction: Peace without Politics?’ in D. Chandler (ed.), ‘Peace without Politics? TenYears of International State-Building in Bosnia’, International Peacekeeping, 12 (3), 307–21.

650 ADAM FAGAN


http://www.du.edu/humanrights/workingpapers/papers/02-belloni-0100.pdf

http://www.du.edu/humanrights/workingpapers/papers/02-belloni-0100.pdf

Clapham, C. (1996) Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Deacon, B. and Stubbs, P. (1998) ‘International Actors and Social Policy Development in Bosnia-Herzegovina:Globalism and the New Feudalism’, Journal of European Social Policy, 8 (2), 99–115.

Doherty, B. (2002) Ideas and Actions in the Green Movement. London: Routledge.

Duffield, M. (2001) Global Governance and the New Wars. London: Zed Books.

Fagan, A. (2001) ‘Environmental Capacity-Building in the Czech Republic’, Environment and Planning A, 33 (4),589–606.

Fagan, A. and Jehlicka, P. (2003) ‘Contours of the Czech Environmental Movement: A Comparative Analysisof Hnutí Duha (Rainbow Movement) and Jihoceské Matky (South Bohemian Mothers)’, EnvironmentalPolitics, 12 (2), 49–70.

Grindle, M. S. (ed.) (1997) Getting Good Government: Capacity-Building in the Public Sector of Developing Countries.Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Haas, P. M. (1992) ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, InternationalOrganization, 46 (1), 1–35.

Hann, C. M. (ed.) (2002) Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia. London: Routledge.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Harrison, G. (2004) The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States. London: Routledge.

Held, D., McGraw, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global Transformation: Politics, Economics and Culture.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hoksbergen, R. (2005) ‘Building Civil Society through Partnership: Lessons from a Case Study of the ChristianReformed World Relief Committee’, Development in Practice, 15 (1), 16–27.

Ignatieff, M. (2003) Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. London: Vintage.

Janicke, M. (1997) ‘The Political System’s Capacity for Environmental Policy’, in M. Janicke and H. Weidner(eds), National Environmental Policies: A Comparative Study of Capacity-Building. Berlin: Springer, pp. 4–24.

Janicke, M. (2002) ‘The Political System’s Capacity for Environmental Policy: The Framework for Compari-son’, in H. Weidner and M. Janicke (eds), Capacity Building in National Environmental Policy. Berlin: Springer,pp. 1–18.

Kitschelt, H. (1986) ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest’, British Journal of Political Science, 16(1), 57–85.

Kriesi, H. (1995) ‘The Political Opportunity Structure of New Social Movements: Its Impact on theirMobilization’, in J. J. Craig and B. Klandermans (eds), The Politics of Social Protest. London: UCL Press,pp. 167–98.

Lijphart, A. (1984) Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty One Countries. NewHaven CT: Yale University Press.

Mandel, R. (2002) ‘Seeding Civil Society’, in C. M. Hann (ed.), Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices inEurasia. London: Routledge, pp. 279–96.

OECD (1992) Market and Government Failures in Environmental Protection: The Case of Transport. Paris: OECD.

OECD (1994) Capacity Development in Environment. Paris: OECD.

OECD (1995) Developing Environmental Capacity: A Framework for Donor Involvement. Paris: OECD.

Pugh, M. (2005) ‘Transformation in the Political Economy of Bosnia since Dayton’, in D. Chandler (ed.),Peace without Politics: TenYears of International State-Building in Bosnia. London: Routledge, pp. 142–56.

Quigley, K. F. F. (2000) ‘Lofty Goals, Modest Results:Assisting Civil Society in Eastern Europe’, in M. Ottawayand T. Carothers (eds), Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion. Washington DC: CarnegieEndowment for International Peace, pp. 191–216.

Rootes, C. (2003) Environmental Protest in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sagar, A. and VanDeveer, S. (2005) ‘Capacity Development for the Environment: Broadening the Scope’, GlobalEnvironmental Politics, 5 (3), 14–22.

Sampson, S. (1996) ‘The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil society to Albania’, in C. M. Hann and E. Dunn(eds), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge, pp. 121–42.



Tilly, C. (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley.

VanDeveer, S. and Dabelko, G. D. (2001) ‘It’s Capacity Stupid: International Assistance and National Imple-mentation’, Global Environmental Politics, 1 (2), 18–29.

VanDeveer, S. and Sagar, A. (2005) ‘Capacity Building for the Environment: North and South’, in E. Corell,A. C. Kallhauge and G. Sjostedt (eds), Furthering Consensus: Meeting the Challenges of Sustainable Developmentbeyond 2002. London: Green Leaf, pp. 259–73.

Wedel, J. (2001) Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998.New York: St Martin’s Press.

Weidner, H. and Janicke, M. (2002) ‘Summary: Environmental Capacity Building in a Converging World’,in H. Weidner and M. Janicke (eds), Capacity Building in National Environmental Policy. Berlin: Springer,pp. 409–44.

Zald, M. N. and McCarthy, J. (1987) Social Movements in an Organizational Society. New Brunswick NJ:Transaction.

652 ADAM FAGAN


Global-Local Linkage in the Western Balkans: The Politics of Environmental Capacity Building in...

Documents

Transcript of Global-Local Linkage in the Western Balkans: The Politics of Environmental Capacity Building in...