30 YEARS

This is the very brief story of the 30 years of the Environment Foundation of Turkey, which was established on 1 February 1978. An objective assessment of the past 30 years exhibits that the Foundation has provided many diverse services and has assumed a leading role in various fields. Recalling the fact that the concept of environment was barely known and discussed and that there were not any publications concerning the issue and above all, legal arrangements did not exist 30 years ago, the significance of the point reached today may be grasped easily.

EFT, having rather staged public highlighting and awareness efforts in the first years following its foundation, later focused on the technical issues, which were ignored by the majority of people. Briefly listing the initial steps taken by the Environment Foundation of Turkey may make it possible to recall and assess the developments concerning the environment in Turkey to an extent.

· EFT, prior to and in the very first days of its foundation, asserted the necessity for the constitution of a department concerning environment within the body of the Government, which should be an undersecretariat subordinated to the Prime Ministry. This assertion found approval and the Undersecretariat of Environment under the Prime Ministry was established on 12 August 1978. Thus, an NGO became an initiator in the establishment of a unit within the body of the Government, which would dwell on environmental issues.

· EFT pointed out, since the first day of its foundation, by general statements, the necessity for the execution of legal arrangements and that a new branch of law, called Environment Law would and should be developed. Through articles and speeches published in newspapers and magazines, it tried to bring the issue onto the agenda of the country.

· EFT, following its general statements pertaining to the Environment Law, made its first clear and definite rise in October 1980, and published the brochure proposing a provision to be entered in the new constitution, while the same suggestion published with an article in the “Milliyet” newspaper of 24 October 1980, was announced to a wider public. Accordingly, Article 56 of the 1982 Constitution was included based on the text prepared by the Foundation.

· EFT submitted to concerned authorities the draft it prepared in conclusion of a comparative law study it initiated again in the autumn of 1980. This draft, at a commission including the Foundation, after some revisions, came into force on 11 August 1983 as Environment Law numbered 2872. In this manner the Foundation had been able to obtain a successful result in its work on environmental law it had started in the Fall of 1980.

· EFT, publishing the information acquired during the preparatory stage of the draft law, introduced the first books into the Turkish environmental law literature, which were depleted within a short period of time after their publication.

· EFT, with an inclination toward inventorial work mentioned in the Fourth Five-Year Development Plan, in conclusion of a study which took over a year by a team of 33, by publishing the Environmental Profile of Turkey in 1981 became the first NGO in the world, which performed such a study. In the following years seven more editions were published.

· EFT became the first institution to focus on the relation between rapid population growth and environmental problems. The Foundation, which organized the Population and Environment Conference in 1982, held these conferences four more times, published books and prepared an educative film regarding this issue. The film was broadcasted in 1987 three times on the “TRT” Television Channel. Copies of it prepared later were sent to all provincial directorates of the Ministry of Health.

· EFT became the first NGO to emphasize new and clean energy resources by performing a comprehensive study and holding a conference in 1984.

· EFT, by organizing a competition and holding a conference in 1985, became the first environmental NGO, which invited economists, the business world and industrialists to discuss and consider the environment extensively.

· EFT, by translating and publishing in 1985 the book entitled “Climate and Mankind”, which called attention to climate change and global warming, brought up these most important subjects for the first time in Turkey.

· EFT, by a study it published in 1987, focusing on Ankara as a pilot city, set forth the model by which the center of a metropolitan city could be heated by the use of entirely local resources and without causing pollution. Turkey, today being dependent on the import of natural gas, could still have taken into consideration the importance of domestic resources, in those days.

· EFT, with the experience gained by the preparation of the environmental profile, again in 1987, by publishing the inventory on biological diversity and in the years that followed the inventory on wetlands, demonstrated examples of the compilation of data.

· EFT, compiling all texts of law concerning the environment, published the Turkish Environmental Legislation and carried on this service in the following years. Presently, the Turkish Environmental Legislation is offered in the Web-site of the Foundation for the benefit of all the interested.

· EFT became the first NGO to render a service of comparing the environmental legislations of the European Union and Turkey in 1989 and reiterated a similar study in 2001.

· EFT inviting the representatives of all coastal countries of the Mediterranean to Antalya in 1989, became the first Turkish non-governmental organization to host an international Mediterranean conference.

· EFT took steps that led to the establishment of the expression and concept of “sustainable development” in Turkey. It organized the first conference on sustainable development on 29-30 November 1989, and introduced “Our Common Future”, which is the fundamental source of the concept of Sustainable Development, into Turkish and the printed 6500 copies of the book were depleted fast and the Foundation perpetuated its studies in this respect.

· EFT, in 1991, executed the biological and ecological research project on the lakes of Akşehir, Beyşehir, Hotamış and Karamuk as well as on the Ereğli Marshes.

· EFT, by focusing on a subject being important from the ecological perspective, organized a conference in 1993, on the subject of Management of Wetlands.

· EFT became the first institution to initiate cooperation with the Central Asian and Black Sea countries as regards environment and to sustain its extensive efforts for twelve years. Within the framework of the project, provided support for the establishment of NGOs in countries, for example such as Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Bulgaria etc.

· EFT, in 1994, by a Training Program on Environmental Impact Assessment, gave a five-day training course it organized in Ankara to 80 technicians at certain levels.

· EFT became the first institution to bring onto the agenda the relations between Population, Environment and Development at a Conference it organized in Ankara in 1997.

· EFT, by reiterating the Conference on Population, Environment and Development in Diyarbakır in 2001, made an assessment in this regard on the Southeastern Anatolia Project. This Conference qualified as a continuation of the research and education activities that the Foundation carried out in the Region since 1993.

· EFT, also in 2001, by doing necessary landscaping, arranged for a park to be established in Kaynaşlı, which had been badly affected by the earthquake of 1999, and in addition built a kindergarden and cleaning/hygienic facilities at the sides of the park.

· EFT organized Environmental Management Training Seminars attended by provincial administrators in Kayseri, Çankırı, Çorum, Kocaeli and Eskişehir in 2003; and in Samsun in 2004, with the participation of administrators from neighbouring provinces.

· EFT completed the comparative survey on the subjects of Organic Farming and Genetically Modified Organisms in the Legislation of the European Union and in that of Turkey, and published the results in 2003.

· EFT published in 2003 an inventory in connection with medicinal plants in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and the Ukraine, having a similar cover of vegetation and this study became the first work on an international level in the subject of medicinal plants carried out by an NGO.

· EFT, by departing from the point that Turkey needed a strategy on the subject of medicinal plants, submitted the text it had prepared to related authorities in 2004.

· EFT, by organizing technical discussion meetings about the Kyoto Protocol, the Johannesburg Summit and for the first time in Turkey, the Biosafety Agreement, published the results in three books on 2005.

· EFT put into realization a study surveying the situation of the potential and related work carried out in the subject of renewable energy sources in Turkey and published it in a book at the end of 2006.

· EFT put into application in 2007, a project with the aim of transferring to Turkey the experiences gained in the subject of environment during the process of accession and after becoming a member of the European Union by the neighbouring country of Greece and within this framework organized seminars in Ankara, Çorum, İstanbul, Kocaeli, İzmir and Uşak. The results of these seminars, which were attended by representatives of public agencies and members of the private sector, were published at the end of the year.

· EFT organized a technical discussion meeting that dwelled on how environmental education is given in Turkey and how it should be given and by publishing the results in a book at the end of 2007, brought the subject to the attention of the concerned.

· EFT, in continuation of the comparative work on legislation it had put into realization previously, completed the work on the study of Renewable Energy Legislation in Turkey and in the European Union and published the results in January 2008.

· EFT, in cooperation with İstanbul and Kocaeli Chambers of Industry, organized two discussion meetings on industry and carbon emissions in March and November 2008.

While rendering such services, we have never swerved from the observance of laws and the classical foundation understanding for 30 years. We have not been involved in extremist movements. We have not dealt with politics. We have not stepped out of the line drawn for a moderate, balanced and realistic NGO.