| Selin Devranoglu |
This summer, I interned in an environmental organization in Istanbul called Bumerang. Bumerang, founded in the winter of 2005, is a very young organization which currently focuses mainly on the problem of toxic substances in Turkey. The founders of Bumerang are also Greenpeace volunteers and Bumerang is working very closely with Greenpeace Turkey. One of the short-term goals of Bumerang for this summer was to establish an information basis for Turkey’s national implementation plan for the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
During the internship, my main responsibility was to conduct research about the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants in general and about Turkey’s stance in regards to this convention. I used internet sources and contacted UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) which is working under the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Turkey in order to get information about the actions taken so far and actions that are planned to be taken in order to fight the problem of persistent organic pollutants in Turkey. The Stockholm Convention focuses on 12 of the most dangerous and most commonly emitted POPs and aims to decrease the emission of these POPs, ultimately eliminating these emissions by calling for more environmentally friendly methods in production and waste treatment. Turkey has signed the convention but has not yet ratified it, and, therefore, the demands of the Stockholm Convention are not yet binding for Turkey. UNIDO has prepared a proposal about fighting the POPs problem in Turkey and was granted $500,000 by GEF (Global Environment Facility, a programme set up in 1992 by the initiation of several EU countries) for the implementation of a 2-year project which aims to bring together the inventories on POPs and prepare the ones that are missing; prepare the national implementation plan; and lobby the government for the ratification of the Stockholm Convention.
I also worked on some Greenpeace campaigns, such as the energy and the oceans campaign, and helped with preparations for fairs, translations, and general office work.
I worked in the “Recycling Fair” that took place during the second week of July in Istanbul, and attended lectures about current recycling methods and possible improvements and future plans in Turkey. I helped with preparing the stand in the fair and informed visitors about the actions of Bumerang and Greenpeace concerning the waste problem and recycling. Open system incineration plants which are portrayed as a good solution to the waste problem have been one of the concepts that we have been fighting against due to the vast amount of harm it brings to the environment. A devastating result of burning solid waste in open system incinerators is emission of many toxic substances including some very dangerous POPs into the air, soil and water. We have been promoting feasible and much cleaner alternatives such as closed system incinerators which are increasingly being used in many developed countries. We have also informed people about how recycling alone can never be sufficient if it is not complemented by clean production, reduction of consumption and reusing.
As a part of my internship, I also attended a 3-day MaB (Man and the Biosphere Programme) conference in Edirne (a city bordering both Greece and Bulgaria) about the shared bio-reserves in the Meric/Evros/Marissa River Delta. I represented Bumerang at the conference, attended all the lectures and the workshops, and made a presentation about the results of my workshop group. I gained a great deal of information regarding the problems in the area and met many people working in all three countries such as professors and heads of NGOs.
One of my expectations from this internship was to learn more about the environmental problems in Turkey, how organizations such as environmental NGOs work, and the government’s approaches to environmental issues. Through my internship I have gained a considerable amount of knowledge about these issues. I was also expecting to meet active environmentalists in Turkey and I made many contacts with both high level administrators and volunteers both in Greenpeace Turkey and Bumerang. I think this experience has been very valuable because there is no better way of learning about these issues than actually working actively in an environmental NGO in Turkey. Since I am continuing my education in the US and not in Turkey, I have always felt the need to learn more about the environmental issues of my home country. This internship provided me with the opportunity to do so.
This internship has also been a helpful experience for my senior integrative project. Before this internship, I did not have extensive knowledge about the most urgent environmental issues in Turkey and about the actions taken by the government. I came to realize the importance of pressure from international cooperation treaties and the pressure from NGOs, and saw for myself the effectiveness of these pressures and the methods through which they can be exerted on the governments. Learning about the main environmental issues in a developing country like Turkey has helped me understand the factors that might be affecting the situation of the environment in similar developing countries. Learning about how some issues can be more urgent than others has also helped me decide on the focus of the topic of my senior integrative project. I also came to realize I want to focus on environmental issues that are very urgent and that are relatively more important for developing countries.
For my senior integrative project, I will focus on the environmental problems in developing countries and the environmental policies that are in place to deal with these problems. I plan to focus on the problem of increasing amounts of municipal and industrial waste as a result of economic development and the methods used for dealing with this problem, such as open-system waste incineration technology. I will take Turkey and Greece as case studies and pay special attention to similarities and disparities between them. I will also analyze the factors that play important roles in the decisions about environmental policies regarding this issue.