The European Green Belt is a grassroots initiative of ecological importance. Running along the corridor of the former Iron Curtain, which divided the European continent into East and West for nearly 40 years, the 7,767-mile-long proposed belt will pass through eight biogeographic regions and touch many European countries. When adopted, the European Green Belt initiative will connect National Parks, Nature Parks and Biosphere Reserves along and across borders and serve as a refuge for numerous endangered species and habitats.
Proposed route of the European Green Belt
The proposed route of the Green Belt follows the course of the borders, which divided the Eastern European communist countries and the Western Capitalist countries during the Cold War from the north of Finland along the Baltic Coast through Central Europe and the Balkans to the Adriatic Sea. The belt is divided into three regional sections: The Fennoscandian Green Belt (Norway, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), the Central European Green Belt (Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy) and the South Eastern European Green Belt (Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Greece and Turkey). It will connect 16 EU countries, four candidate countries (Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Turkey), two potential candidates (Kosovo, Albania) and two non-EU countries (Russia and Norway).
Proposed European Green Belt. Map created by Smaak via Wikimedia
History of the European Green Belt Initiative
It all began with the Green Belt Resolution of Hof (Germany) in December 1989, just one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because of its isolation, the former German no-man’s land had been a refuge for many endangered species. Conservationist hoped to turn the former German death strip into a nature reserve. Thinking even bigger, they hoped to create an ecological zone that stretches along the entire former Iron Curtain in Europe. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/nature-unites-peace-and-conservation-former-death-zone-european-green-belt Out of this dream, the European Green Belt initiative was born in 2003. This symbol for transboundary cooperation and a European shared natural and cultural heritage is sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.
German section of the European Green Belt
The inner German border, which separated East and West Germany, stretched 869 miles from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Czech Republic in the south. The former death strip ranged in width from 200 feet to 650 feet and provided ideal conditions for flora and fauna. Up to 600 endangered species thrived in this undisturbed terrain. Then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany was reunited. Immediately, plans to fill the former no-man’s land with buildings, streets and farmland materialized. But Germany’s environmentalists fought hard to prevent development. While around 20 percent of the 869 mile-stretch was lost to some sort of development, eighty percent of unspoiled landscape remain where wildlife has been minimally impacted by human activities. Here endangered species continue to find refuge.
The European Green Belt is not only of ecological importance, it also forms a historical memorial to the former division of Europe. Later this year, Between October 13 and October 18, 2018, the 10th Pan-European Green Belt Conference will be held in Eisenach, Germany. Participants will have an opportunity to continue working toward cooperative European protection of this unique area.
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Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
