Chapter 4
From the Field: East-East Cooperation
in Reality
4.6 The future of East-East cooperation
What will be the future of East-East cooperation for the environmental
NGOs in Central Europe? In this paragraph we see the organizational
plans of the interviewed NGOs in this direction and some attention
is paid to more general thoughts about the future of East-East
cooperation.
The NGOs themselves
All interviewed NGOs plan to continue to work with the current
partner groups. The experiences were evaluated positively to such
a degree that they at least will go on with East-East cooperation
on the level and with the partners they have now. New activities
in the field of cooperation will be focused on network activities,
both national and international. East-East cooperation might be
a part of these cooperative plans for the future, but for most
NGOs this depends on the capacity available, since a lot of NGOs
consider East-East cooperation as more time-, energy- and money
consuming than internal or East-West cooperation.
In general
Still almost all interviewed people expect East-East cooperation
to become more important in the near future, because the environmental
NGOs will see the benefits more and more and Western funding organizations
push towards East-East cooperation at the moment. Besides that
an important reason for increased interest for East-East cooperation
is the idea that East-West cooperation will become less lucrative.
Western NGOs, governments and funding organizations are looking
more and more behind Central Europe to the former Soviet Union.
A general feeling of the CE NGOs is that the Western interest
in CE will decrease. [Siegel and Yancey, 1992, p. 63]
Finally it is important to keep in our minds that East-East cooperation
is an ongoing process that needs time and money to evolve.
REC * PUBLICATIONS * BEYOND BORDERS * FROM THE FIELD: EAST-EAST COOPERATION IN REALITY * THE FUTURE OF EAST-EAST COOPERATION
