People Power

“In Hungary, in response to falling water tables and growing droughts, we are working with authorities and local farmers to reconnect floodplains to the Tisza River so that seasonal floods can return water to the soil and groundwater. In Romania, we are working with companies like IKEA to promote responsible forest management among their suppliers,” says Andreas Beckmann ’90, regional CEO, World Wildlife Fund Central & Eastern Europe.

After graduating from Swarthmore in 1990, I ended up in Prague in the afterglow of the fall of the Iron Curtain. I was fascinated by this world and inspired by its heroes — like Václav Havel, the dissident and later president, who suffered years of imprisonment for living his conscience and telling truth to power.

Havel’s example pushed me to question my own truth. The Ph.D. in East European history I had started at Stanford was intellectually interesting, but seemed ever more distant from my concern regarding the state of the natural world. While doing my research in Prague, I took the courage to follow my conscience. I volunteered for different organizations and eventually ended up at an environmental foundation.

My door-opener was writing reports for the foundation’s American funders, but I quickly found other things that needed doing, from setting up the foundation’s first website to helping develop the board. It was learning by doing, and I loved it. I helped to build the Czech Environmental Partnership into the country’s leading environmental foundation, and then moved to Vienna to work for the World Wildlife Fund, the global conservation organization, where I have been ever since, building WWF’s work and presence across the region. There were about 20 of us, mostly working from Vienna, when I started; today, we have about 240 professionals working in established organizations in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine.

Our focus is on preserving many of the old-growth forests, wetlands and rivers, as well as wildlife like lynx, bears, and sturgeon that make this region exceptional in Europe and beyond and that are the basis for the welfare and well-being in the region. Increasingly, this work goes beyond traditional conservation measures like leveraging European Union legislation to establish protected areas. In a region where jobs and local development are paramount, we are working with the public and private sectors as well as science and civil society to promote business and development approaches that work with — rather than against — nature. For example, in Ukraine, we are working to restore forested shelter belts in areas that have been de-mined.

The legacy of past oppression, from Russian czars to Soviet politburos, weighs heavy on the people in Central and Eastern Europe. People often say they have no power. But I have learned that people can make a difference, and even work miracles — and in so doing give real meaning to their lives.

In Bulgaria, people took to the streets in tens of thousands to stop the destruction of Pirin National Park, a World Heritage Site — and won. In Hungary, tens of thousands of people signed a petition, expressed their concern, and stopped the Orban government from opening protected areas to forest felling. And I have seen the results — like the restored wetlands at Gârla Mare — achieved thanks to the support of donors and partners. I have seen the real changes such actions have made — shaping further developments as well as a culture of action.

It is not only the action itself that is important, but also the legacy of that action. Working in Central and Eastern Europe, I have learned that it is important to find your meaning, to live in truth. We need to do what we think is important, to do what gives our fleeting lives meaning. For me, that truth is to treasure nature — because it is wonderful, awe-inspiring, and because we depend on it for our very well-being and existence.