About

According to World Health Organization data from 2016, more than 30,000 inhabitants per year will die from air pollution in Ukraine. Although local government has begun to adopt the EU standards, the progress is slow and environmental protection is not a priority. The country is facing a high level of corruption and oligarchs often enforce their interests at the expense of the citizens.

We help to identify serious environmental issues, suggest their solutions and support civil society to enforce the right to live healthy environment.

A coalition “Stop Poisoning Ukraine!” unites citizens of five industrial cities – Dnipro, Kharkiv, Krivyi Rih, Zaporizhia and Mariupol. More than 4 million people breath extremely polluted air mainly by metallurgy and coal power plants using outdated technologies. We help to strengthen the power of the coalition and campaign to achieve improvements.

In 2018, we held a 'Fighting Air Pollution in the Industrial Cities of Europe' international conference in Ostrava, Czech Republic. For a whole week, environmentalists, active citizens, scientists, and the representatives of heavy industry and municipal management discussed possible solutions across European countries. You can find all important documents here on Arnika's website including published news, photos, presentations and also the adopted declaration.

Our activities are funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic from the Transition Promotion Programme.

Stop poisoning Ukraine! Coalition for the clean air

In previous years...

In 2017, we helped Ukrainian communities to deal with the activities of one of the country's richest oligarchs, Yuriy Kosyuk. The growing business of MHP, the largest agricultural corporation in the country is a shining example of trampling human rights in the countryside, far away from legal help and media attention. Its industrial meat production has many negative consequences. including, amongst others, harming the local community in Olyanitsya. MHP is owned by one of five richest billionaires of Ukraine and advisor to the president.