WE CAN CHANGE THE NARRATIVE!
With this post, we would like to summarize all the activities Article 1 – Institute for Global Politics and Law has done in the past two years, to advocate for the treatment of severe air pollution as a matter of national security.
Poster for the public event ‘Vizioniraj’
Back in 2017, Lazar Pop Ivanov wrote and published an article outlining the reasons why we should be treating air pollution as a national security threat. The article was published by www.pina.mk, in December 2017. The article is in Macedonian language and can be accessed on this link [click here]. The central points from this article have also been presented at the public event ‘Vizioniraj‘ that happened in Skopje in February 2018. The live stream from that presentation is available on this link.
However, our core academic position and arguments were outlined in a joint paper written by Marija Mirchevska and Lazar Pop Ivanov, and published on our website [link here]. This paper titled: ‘Why Macedonia and Kosovo should treat air pollution as a matter of national security’ was presented at the UBT International Conference in Kosovo in October 2018 and is available in EN on the [link here].
Click this image to access the paper online 
Marija Mirchevska presenting the paper on the UBT International Conference in Kosovo
Following the International Conference in Kosovo, in November 2018 we presented a revised version of the paper, focusing only on the case of N.Macedonia at a science conference in the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Following the conference, in April 2019 the Academy published the paper in Macedonian language alongside the other contributions to the conference. The full text of the paper in Macedonian is available on this link [click here].
Cover page of the Academy publication
In order to reach a different audience, and present our ideas to the general public, in cooperation with http://www.vidivaka.mk we created a video column, aimed at presenting the arguments from our paper. The video was published in February 2019 and is in Macedonian language.
Having in mind that one of the arguments that we put forth in our papers is that the National Security Council in our country should put the air pollution on the Council’s agenda and have the minister of environment or a person that can discuss in a professional manner the degradation of the environment to sit on those meetings, we used the presidential elections and sent an open letter to all the presidential candidates back in March 2017 [link to the open letter].
During the presidential campaign we also participated in a public event organized by the 02 Initiative where we presented the ideas of our paper in front of all presidential candidates.
It is noteworthy that all candidates by voting day had the item of: air pollution being treated as a national security issue in their manifestos.
Pictures from the public event 
Pictures from the public event
Finally, we presented the arguments of our paper on the International Conference “State sovereignty,climate policy and dispute resolution in environmental law” that took place in Skopje on September 10th 2019 [link here]
We would like to thank all friends of #Article1 that have given voice to this idea.
We would also like to thank members of the academia, CSO’s and individuals that have given us insightful and useful feedback by constructively engaging with the content in our papers and articles, offering both criticism and support.
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