Intro
This post is part of the #GiveMacedoniaAir series, where I try to raise awareness of the pollution issue in my homeland, as well as efforts made to tackle the problem.
Welcome to Macedonia, a country of amazing food, warm people, beautiful nature, and toxic winter air that kills 3000 people annually (0.15% of the population).
There are days that the air pollution reaches x20 over the EU limit, going up to x4 of that in Beijing.
And yet, this small European country and it’s people, landlocked in the Balkans, are forgotten and left to fight both the pollutants in the atmosphere as well as a lazy government that is not willing to action upon the problem.
I am Gorjan, an environment activist and one of those who is taking the fight with pollution to the front lines. Together with over 1000 of my fellow activists, we put up never ending efforts in both protests, lobbying, online activism as well as guerilla marketing tactics to get both our government, as well as the world to realize that Macedonia is suffocating.
After moving to the Netherlands to do my master studies, I found out that not only do people outside not know about the problems that my homeland is facing, they rarely know where Macedonia even is (can’t blame them, we are the world's 145th country by size). So I came up with #GiveMacedoniaAir, a series of blog posts that explain the history of how we came to this point, what is currently being done, as well as my involvement in the fight.
When did this all start?
Honestly, I don’t know. The pollution has been around since I can remember. And people didn’t seem to be bothered too much about it, since there was no measurement being done to understand the severity of the situation, and those that were made by the government, had little to no public exposure. People accepted pollution as smelly fog.
The first time I found out about how badly our air was contaminated by various pollutants, was back in 2011, when 17 measuring stations (donations from the EU) were set up across the country, and started reporting live data online, and to an electronic billboard in the center of Skopje — the capital. After people realized the severity of the situation, and stared protests in front of government institutions, the billboard was taken down for “repairs”, never to be seen again.
Data to the rescue
As data disappeared, so did the issue from people’s minds. The less you know, the happier you live, right? I broke that status quo with an app called MojVozduh (MyAir) in December 2014, which took open data, and displayed it in a clear and understandable way, accessible to everyone on Android, iOS and the web. With over 100.000 combined users accessing the information, people took to the streets in massive protests around the country, blocking major cities and demanding that the government take action!
Unfortunately, that didn’t accomplish much. Promises were made, and one factory was closed during the peak pollution season — nothing that will help us battle this problem in the long run.
Nonetheless, this did not stop the determined people of Macedonia to keep on fighting for the right to breathe clean air, and demanding that the government play an equal role in this fight, because at the end of the day, we all breathe the same air.
Distance is but a number
At around this time, I moved to the Netherlands to do my masters. I was now living in a country with clean air, bikes and windmills. I felt how clean air smells, that the so called “smell of winter” back home, was actually the smell of fog. This was heaven compared to where I came from. But I am a Macedonian, and I could not simply leave my people behind.
My fight continued from abroad, via public talks, regular updates to the mobile app, as well as visits back home to attend and speak at protests. In the latests twist of events, while visiting the European Space Agency’s offices in the Netherlands, I managed to make amazing connections and together with ESA and it’s contractors, work on getting better data to located the pollution sources in Macedonia!
Sounds cool? Follow this publication or me on social media where I will share the second part of this series in the following days, covering the latest developments of how we can fight pollution from space!
