Former Hungarian President discusses Tisza River plastic waste problem in podcast
On his Blue Planet (Kék bolygó) podcast streamed on Monday, János Áder, Hungary’s former president, discussed the issue of plastic waste on the Tisza river with independent filmmaker and environmental activist Dimitry Ljasuk.
Áder said that Hungarian-Ukrainian director Ljasuk was an advocate fighting against human neglect over the environment created by waste. His documentary In the Name of the River Tisza won main prize at the International Nature Film Festival in Gödöllő last year, Áder noted.
Ljasuk said he had witnessed the problem of plastic pollution on the Tisza first in 2018 when he was shooting his first film. He then decided to be an activist and organised a campaign which collected one and a half tonnes of plastic waste from the river with the involvement of 60 volunteers.
“The areas cleaned every year become polluted again, because floods bring huge amounts of additional waste from the upper sections of the river from Ukraine and Romania,” the director said.
He said responsibility for the plastic waste pollution lay with three actors, namely people, corporations and the state. “People decide what they buy and where they throw the packaging. Companies have spread plastic packaging, with 20,000 plastic bottles being produced in every second today,” he said, noting that the state had the role to act as a regulator over the first two actors.
Áder noted that compared with the 2 million tonnes of plastic used in the 1960s globally, the amount of plastic used today was 400 million tonnes.
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1.3 million m³ of firewood will be harvested in state-owned forests in 2022
All tree felling will continue to be scrutinised by forestry and environmental protection officials and by national park experts, even after modifications to rules making it easier to harvest firewood, the agriculture ministry’s state secretary for forestry and land said on public radio on Sunday.
Péter Zámbó said the recently issued government decree paves the way for harvesting a large volume of firewood, if necessary in the event of an energy emergency. Experts will still decide on whether or not to issue permits for tree-felling only after inspection of the site, he added.
He said 1.3 million cubic metres of firewood will be harvested in state-owned forests before the end of the year, and the government is also counting on firewood from privately-owned forests.
He added that 3.8 million cubic metres of locust trees, on areas that are not protected, can be legally felled at present, and the felling will start there, if necessary.
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Around 13 million cubic metres of wood, of a total of around 400 million cubic metres of living wood stock, is harvested in Hungary each year, Zámbó said. State- and privately-owned forestry companies account for 8-8.5 million of that, of which 3-4 million is firewood, meaning there is close to 4-4.5 million cubic metres of “reserves”, he added.
Starting the harvest of firewood two weeks earlier, in August, will not have any negative effects on the soil or bird life, Zámbó said, noting that trees felled now would yield dry firewood after 90 days.
Read alsoLots of people protested against tree-felling in Budapest
Does the government threaten Hungarian forests? – forestry company
A recent government decree allowing the felling of trees in the event of an energy emergency will not put Hungary’s forests in danger, the managing director of forestry company Egererdő said on Friday.
Csaba Dobre told public current affairs channel M1 that tree-felling was carried out on line with the country’s strict environmental protection law, and the decree would enter into force only in case of an emergency.
The company which manages forests in the Mátra, Bükk and Borsod hills projects that the 1.3 million cubic metres of firewood planned to be produced this year will be sufficient to satisfy public demand, he added.
The extension of the period allowed for tree-felling does not threaten the forests, either, because the extended drought has already resulted in autumn conditions, he said.
Dobre told public Kossuth radio that 70 percent of the woods managed by Egeredo had the highest ecological value, and these could not be felled even in case of an emergency.
Opposition green parties have launched a campaign to prevent tree-felling for the provision of firewood.
Featured image: illustration
Lots of people protested against tree-felling in Budapest
Opposition LMP on Friday staged a protest in front of the Ministry of Agriculture against a recent government decree easing the felling of trees.
In a speech, Erzsébet Schmuck, the party’s co-leader, demanded that the “crazy decree” be repealed. She said the consequences of climate change were increasingly severe, with the central and eastern parts of Hungary suffering from desertification, “a process which will be aggravated by this government decision”.
Hungary would need six times its 2 million hectares of forest area to achieve climate neutrality, Schmuck said. “If there won’t be any forests, then sooner or later we won’t be here, either,” she said, adding that the government’s measures would result in “none of the climate goals being met”.
László Lóránt Keresztes, the head of parliament’s sustainable development committee, said the government needed to be confronted with the consequences of its actions, insisting that “the disgraceful deforestation decree is equivalent to the destruction of nature”. He said scientists, environmental activists and mayors, including ones from the ruling parties, had spoken out against the decree.
Keresztes called on President Katalin Novák to “take a stand against the destruction of national assets”.
Péter Ungár, LMP’s parliamentary group leader, said that while Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was not responsible for climate change, he was the one to blame “for us having a government that isn’t preparing us for the effects of climate change and for why we aren’t doing anything to mitigate them”.
Those who oppose the decree “will prevent this destruction of nature with their physical presence, barricades and local groups set up across the country”, he said.
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Hungarian opposition LMP turns to former president over tree-felling decree
Opposition LMP is turning to former president János Áder, a committed environmentalist, over a recent government decree allowing the felling of trees in the interest of stepping up firewood production, Antal Csárdi, the party’s deputy group leader, said on Wednesday.
Péter Ungár, LMP’s parliamentary group leader, has asked Áder to use his influence to have the tree-felling decree withdrawn as soon as possible, Csárdi told a press conference, arguing that the “destructive decree” could do “enormous damage”, while the cost of mitigating its effects would be huge.
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The decree would do little to help people who struggle to fulfil their energy needs, but it would inflict an intolerable amount of damage, Csárdi said. He said Áder had “talked a lot about protecting nature” as president, adding that he now had a chance to “do something to prevent decisions that truly deplete our future”.
Csárdi said the trees to be felled under the decree would have an energy value of zero, arguing that it would take them 1.5-2 years to dry out enough to be used as firewood. He said LMP was turning to the Constitutional Court over the decree, while lawmaker László Lóránt Keresztes plans to convene parliament’s sustainable development committee in the matter.
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Top court will decide about the government’s tree-felling decree
Green opposition LMP has decided to appeal to the Constitutional Court against a recent government decree allowing the felling of trees, which its opponents see as detrimental to Hungary’s forests.
LMP co-leader Erzsébet Schmuck told a press conference on Monday that the decree, aimed at providing sufficient firewood for the heating season, would “remove all restrictions and in fact allow clear cutting even nature reserves”. “No government in Europe would start cutting down forests amid a climate and water crisis,” she insisted, adding fresh-cut wood was not suitable for heating.
Forests produce oxygen, help cool the environment and retain water, thus slowing down climate change, Schmuck said, adding that the decree would delay Hungary’s meeting its climate goals by at least 50 years.
LMP spokesman József Gál said already 25,000 people had supported his party’s signature drive against the contested decree since it was launched last Friday. “Hands off Hungarian forests!” the spokesman added.
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Will the government sell the lands of the Hungarian national parks?
In order to provide firewood for the winter, the government is planning to sell the protected lands of the national parks. Hungary is preparing for severe winter gas shortages and is on the lookout for alternative solutions.
National park forests in danger
The government has officially decided that it will take the radical step of cutting down trees to ensure an adequate supply of firewood for the upcoming winter. Viktor Orbán said in his radio interview last Friday that the government obliged the forest farms to prepare plans to increase firewood production. – reports Portfolio. In addition, Gergely Gulyás also spoke about the forest farms on Saturday and their aim to increase timber harvest. “State farms provide 55 percent of the total supply. This quantity will not only cover the necessary amount for social programmes but will also provide wood for those who plan to purchase it.” – said the minister. The government dramatically increases the supply of wood that can be cut. For example, it also lifted the ban on clearcutting in natural state forests while taking into consideration the importance of landscape protection.
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Greenpeace expert: it is irresponsible to subordinate the preservation of species to economic interests
“At first, we didn’t want to believe it, we thought it might be just a misunderstanding when we heard the news that they wanted to sell the lands of the national parks as well” – said Katalin Rodics, research biologist at Greenpeace Hungary. As Népszava reports, she and his colleagues were utterly shocked by the fact that the idea came from the Minister of Agriculture. However, they hope that the ministry’s proposal will not go through. For instance, it is possible to graze only under strict regulations on the protected grasslands that belong to the national parks. She believes it is irresponsible to subordinate the preservation of species to economic interests.
Conservationists want to protect national parks
According to Katalin Rodics, Hungary should do its utmost to protect its national parks. These lands make up only 5 percent of the country’s territory and only 10 percent of its total protected areas. Moreover, the EU currently reserves a large sum of money for the protection of biological diversity. The biologist asserts that the government should also consider this factor. However, she believes that instead of preserving the nature, Hungary is systematically destroying it.
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Petition against stepping up firewood production launched
The opposition LMP launched a petition against government measures to increase the use of firewood, LMP lawmaker Bernadett Bakos said on Sunday.
As part of the effort to combat the energy crisis, the government eased restrictions on tree-felling in a decree published on Thursday, drawing criticism from opposition parties which said the measure undermined climate protection efforts.
Bakos told a press conference that no other government in Europe was trying to ease the energy crisis by “cutting down forests”. The measure is short-term damage control rather than a solution, she said. LMP called for the decree to be withdrawn immediately. The petition garnered 13,000 signatures on the first day, Bakos said. The party is holding a protest in front of the Agriculture Ministry on Tuesday, she said.
Read alsoGovernment reacted on concerns regarding extended felling
Government reacted on concerns regarding extended felling
Firewood production remains sustainable in Hungary, the agriculture ministry said in a statement on Saturday. As part of the effort to combat the energy crisis, in a decree published on Thursday the government eased restrictions on felling, drawing criticism from opposition parties which said the measure undermined climate protection efforts.
In the statement, Agriculture Minister István Nagy said forestry was an important part of tackling the energy crisis. The measures will not entail clear-cutting, reducing the size of forested areas in Hungary, or harming their condition, he said.
In an effort to combat the energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine and Brussels sanctions, the government is working to ensure that people can use firewood instead of gas wherever possible, he said.
The government has banned the export of firewood from the country and instructed state foresters to increase production, and eased regulations to further facilitate that process.
“By the time the heating season arrives, there will be enough firewood on the market to satisfy demand,” the minister said.
Some two million hectares of forests yield some 3.5 million cubic meters of firewood every year when managed sustainably, Nagy said. “Wood is the only renewable energy source we have not been using to the maximum for decades,” he said.
The government is committed to the long-term sustainability of forestry in Hungary, Nagy said. With the new regulations, “the basic provisions of forestry and environmental protection laws that ensure the expanse and condition of Hungarian forests will not change at all,” he said.
Hungary currently runs one of the largest reforestation and tree-planting programmes in Europe, Nagy said. The government has supported the planting of new forests on 44,000 hectares in the past two years, he said.
Read alsoDroughts becoming more frequent in Hungary
Plastic Cup to start on Tisza river on July 29
The 10th Plastic Cup (PET Kupa) will be held to clean up a 86km section of the Tisza river and its floodplains in north-eastern Hungary between July 29 and August 7, the cup’s organisers said on Wednesday.
Twelve veteran PET Cup teams and several canoes will skim the river from waste between Cigand and Tiszadada, the Termeszetfilm.hu society told MTI.
“The Tisza Plastic Cup initiative is the first in the world in which participating teams use boats they have built from waste collected from nature. They use renewable energy, hand power, oars, sails or solar panels to move their boats,” the association said.
The waste collected will get sorted and some 60 percent of it recycled.
Since it was first held in 2013, the Cup has become a major environmental clean-up programme which has cleaned the Tisza and its floodplains of 225 tonnes of waste, the organisation said.
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Droughts becoming more frequent in Hungary
Drought is affecting large parts of Hungary, the National Meteorological Service said in a Facebook post on Saturday, noting that droughts are becoming more frequent, with hotter summers and more intensive heat waves.
Last year was also dry in Hungary and the drought continued in 2022, the service said. The situation is worse in central parts of the Great Plain and areas east of the River Tisza.
Occasional droughts are part of Hungary’s climate, but “in recent decades summers have become significantly hotter and heat waves more frequent and more intensive…” the Meteorological Service said.
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Agriculture ministry: Hungary committed to preserving ecosystems
The global framework strategy addressing biodiversity and climate change must explore the main causes of biodiversity loss and mandate that biodiversity conservation requirements be integrated into the objectives of the sectors it affects, a deputy state secretary of the agriculture ministry said in Prague on Thursday.
Addressing an informal meeting of EU environment ministers, Bertalan Balczó said that more emphasis should be given to the implementation of the strategy and its monitoring, according to a statement by the ministry.
Read alsoDrought: government asks modifications from the European Commission
He highlighted the importance of the protection, restoration and sustainable management of ecosystems, pointing out that it contributes to water and food security, to maintaining a healthy and liveable urban environment and preventing extreme weather conditions and natural disasters.
Balczó noted that Hungary has seen an improvement in the condition and quality of over 300,000 hectares of natural area since 2004. Hungary’s draft National Biodiversity Strategy for the period up to 2030 is awaiting approval, he said, adding that it includes separate provisions on further exploring the link between climate change and the preservation of biodiversity and ways of improving the resilience of ecosystems to climate change.
Over 53,000 vehicles with green number plates registered in Hungary
The number of environment-friendly noiseless vehicles with green number plates has tripled to over 53,000 in Hungary since 2020, the technology and industry ministry (TIM) said on Wednesday.
Fully 53 percent of those vehicles are driven by electric engines, the ministry said on Facebook. The increase is the result of the government’s programme aimed at facilitating a green transition in transport which accounts for one-fifth of the country’s carbon emissions, the statement said.
The amount of central subsidies allocated for the purchase of electric cars has totalled HUF 20 billion (EUR 49 million) over the past years, the ministry noted. The long-term goal is to achieve full climate neutrality by 2050, it said.
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Budapest’s leadership wants fewer cars, more grazing sheep in the city
According to landscape architect Sándor Bardóczi, the ultimate answer to maintaining urban greenery in Budapest would be sheep grazing in the middle of the city. On the other hand, he and the mayor would like to see fewer cars in the capital.
Cars should be banned in Budapest
As ripost.hu writes, both Gergely Karácsony and Sándor Bardóczi have expressed their opinions about banning cars in Budapest. A serious debate is taking place in the capital about thinning out the car traffic on the lower quay of Pest. Bardóczi put it this way: “Fortunately, there has been a switch in the way residents are thinking about this issue. More and more people are realising that it is not necessary to drive, they switch to public transport, and the number of bikers and pedestrians is growing. The next step is for people to move closer to their workplaces, which will eventually positively affect the structure of the city. All the big cities in the west are crowding out cars. There is no other way for Budapest either. ”
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Grazing sheep in the city?
“In our nature conservation areas, where the goal is to maintain meadows to preserve biodiversity, we want to introduce grazing due to the complex task.” – the architect said to Qubit.
According to Bardóczi, there are three possible places for grazing sheep: 3rd district Mocsárosdűlő, the Tétényi Plateau in Újbuda and the meadows of Felsőrákos in the 10th district.
“It is important to set the right proportions so that the grazing pressure would primarily serve the ecosystem instead of providing economic benefit. The aim is no to breed gray cattle or sheep to meet the needs of a starving city during an unforeseen famine, but to preserve the natural values of the urban areas.” As telex.hu writes this is not the first time flocks of sheep were grazing in big cities. Last year in Szeged, they chewed the grass instead of the lawnmowers.
In the meantime: another green area disappears
While the main architect of Budapest is planning to introduce flocks in the city, another green area disappears. According to Index, the forest of Kiscelli Park in Óbuda will no longer be as green as it was before. Despite the protest of locals, the local government is determined to build a playground in the park. In their view, this development is in the interests of the locals. Viktória Kun, a spokeswoman of the community, said the forest would need maintenance in the first place. In addition, she does not understand why they chose to build an artificial playground. “The forest itself is the playground”.
Hungary may introduce 12.5 EUR climate pass for all public transport
Opposition LMP urged the immediate rollout of a 5,000 forint (EUR 12.5) “climate pass” for all public transport in Hungary at a press conference on Saturday.
At the press conference streamed on Facebook, LMP spokesman József Gál said the public transport pass, modeled on the one in Germany, could be introduced for a trial period of three months from July.
The 100-billion-forint cost of the trial period
could be covered by raising the corporate tax rate for polluting multinationals to 25 percent, he added.
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He said “extraordinary measures” are needed to address climate change and the energy crisis, adding that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced at the same time dependence on Russian energy is cut.
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Parliament cttee head wants Slovakia to stop Sajó River pollution
The head of parliament’s sustainable development committee said on Thursday he expected Slovak authorities to state when they will order a stop to pollution of the River Sajó which flows from the neighbouring country into Hungary.
At an online press conference, László Lóránt Keresztes, a lawmaker for green opposition LMP, summarised his talks on the matter with the head of Slovak parliament’s environmental and agricultural committee earlier in the day.
“Disputes over the scope of authority in the Slovak government are still hampering efforts to stop pollution on the Sajó, and it is still hard to know when pollution that has been going on for months will stop,” he said.
Keresztes said the pollution “has caused shocking destruction, wiping out living organisms along a 10-15km section of the river” in Slovakia, while arsenic content on the Hungarian section, he added, was above safe limits.
He said that although the amount of toxic water released from an abandoned mine into the river had dropped by 70-80 percent over the past two weeks, water flowing into the Sajó on the Slovak side still had a high content of hazardous materials. “Ecological balance can only be retained by fully eliminating the pollution,” the LMP politician said.
Keresztes criticised the Slovak government for failing over many months to take any measures to prevent the disaster. He also criticised the Hungarian government for failing to take sufficient diplomatic action.
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8th International Nature Film Festival ongoing in Gödöllő
Protecting the ecological balance of planet Earth is a priority of growing importance and a matter of public interest, János Áder, Hungary’s former president, said at the 8th International Nature Film Festival in Gödöllő near Budapest on Saturday.
Áder, who is also president of the Blue Planet Foundation, the organiser of the three-day event that began on Friday, told a press conference that the festival attracted a growing number of participants each year. In 2022 altogether 1,400 films were entered from 106 countries, presenting the enchanting diversity of nature and the grave challenges to the environment, he said.
This year’s festival focuses on “green redesigning”, including the reasonable and sustainable management of recyclable materials and efforts to reduce waste, he said.
Áder welcomed that the Young Nature Photographer of the Year contest held for the first time had attracted over 5,000 entries.
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LMP wants more money on environmental protection
LMP believes spending on environmental protection isn’t “money thrown out the window”, but goes toward “the protection of our present and future, our children and civilization”, the co-chair of the opposition party said at a press conference streamed on Facebook on Sunday.
Speaking on the International Day for Biological Diversity, Erzsébet Schmuck noted that over 90 percent of the natural floodplains of Hungarian rivers have been lost, while the biological diversity of natural protection areas is “slowly, but surely” on the decline.
She pointed to the “ecological catastrophe caused by human irresponsibility” on the Sajó river, which flows from Slovakia into Hungary, resulting in “the destruction of an entire ecosystem”.
She also said ladybug and swallow populations are “radically falling” because of “deforestation and a reduction in green areas because of environmental pollution, cities, roads, industrial plants and luxury investments”.
Schmuck said LMP politicians have tabled a number of proposals in parliament in the past decade that serve to protect the biological diversity of the Carpathian Basin.
“There isn’t much time left,” she warned, “The question is whether the current powers understand what is at stake”.
“When you’ve cut down the last tree, when you’ve caught the last fish, you’ll realise that you can’t eat money,” she added.
