Currently, we are taking part in a study of our region's potential recreational status. NGOs can only be strong insofar as they attract various types of specialists who are united by a concrete idea or by the implementation of some sort of plan. Our regional network of NGOs will permit an ongoing exchange of information, thereby enhancing NGO competency, professionalism, and knowledge. A single NGO cannot successfully oppose government agencies or even smaller corporations, but when several NGOs join together the situation changes drastically. The most inaccessible regime or corporation will initiate contacts and start to make certain concessions when faced with such a force.
People are most destructive once they have ceased to feel that they too are part of nature.
And yet every generation that reveres its motherland feels that nature is an essential part of what they cherish about their home. Perhaps it is this contradiction, this disconnect, that is one of the main causes of the environmental problems currently facing the residents of the former Soviet Union, who occupy one-sixth of the earth's land surface. Andrei Sheikin is director of environmental and biological programs at EkoBioMed Center in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Translated by Andy Reese.