Patagonia’s Blue Heart Campaign Aims to Protect the Last Wild Rivers of Europe

In March, Patagonia launched the Blue Heart website and petition urging international banks to stop investing in the destruction of Europe’s last wild rivers. The multimedia campaign is aimed at protecting the Balkan region from more than 3,000 proposed hydropower projects and meant to bring international awareness to a potential environmental disaster. In the Balkan Peninsula between Slovenia and Albania, hydropower projects threaten to destroy the richly diverse culture, history and ecology of the region known as the Blue Heart of Europe.

A website, petition and documentary will raise awareness and facilitate action

Local activists living along these rivers are fighting to save their homes and the rivers and lands that define them. Vigilant and steadfast women from the village of Kruščica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, sat night and day for almost a year in peaceful protest to protect their communities’ rivers and their only source of drinking water, enduring physical violence from authorities to do so.

European and local NGOs led by RiverWatch and Euronatur are opposing government corruption and foreign investment that fuels this hydropower gold rush.

Patagonia is joining with local communities and NGOs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Macedonia to put pressure on foreign developers and banks that are pouring over €700 million to fund the dam-building projects—this according to the Bankwatch report which is released globally today.

One third of the dams and diversions are planned within sensitive protected areas including 118 in national parks. If this fierce local opposition fails, communities will be displaced and the last undammed watersheds on the continent will be irreversibly damaged:

https://bankwatch.org/publication/ financing-for-hydropower-in-protected-areas-of-southeast-europe-update

Patagonia’s Blue Heart website features this endangered and forgotten region and details why hydropower dams are dirty technology that don’t belong in the green energy mix.

Patagonia, along with NGO partners, is asking concerned citizens around the world to sign the petition to stop the funding of these dams and protect the last wild rivers of Europe.

“I believe this wild place requires and deserves protection,” said Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. “It’s a waste of money and a moral travesty that some of the world’s largest financial institutions have embraced this outdated and exploitative technology and are financing new dams in some of the last wild places in Europe. This is a fight too important to ignore.”

While the movement to decommission deadbeat dams and shift to truly clean energy is growing worldwide, the number of proposed projects in the Balkan region has doubled since 2015.

Ninety-one percent of the proposed dams and diversions will provide very little energy and are extremely expensive to build and maintain. Because of their size, they require no environmental impact assessment.

Patagonia’s latest documentary film, Blue Heart, depicts the fight to protect Europe’s last wild rivers and brings international awareness to a potential environmental disaster in Europe. It is being screened around the world as a centrepiece of the ongoing Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign.

The Balkan Peninsula between Slovenia and Albania is home to the last wild rivers in Europe where more than 3,000 proposed hydropower projects threaten to destroy the culture and ecology of this forgotten region. If fierce local opposition fails, 20,000 kilometers of pristine sparkling creeks, raging tributaries and swift, braided currents of the last undammed watersheds on the continent will be forever damaged by thousands of dams and diversions—at a time when dams are being decommissioned throughout much of the developed world.

Local activists living along the shores of these rivers and European NGOs such as RiverWatch and EuroNatur are fighting against government corruption and foreign investment. Blue Heart documents the battle to protect Albania’s Vjosa River, the largest undammed river in Europe; the effort to save the endangered Balkan Lynx in Macedonia, and the months-long fight by women of Kruščica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are protesting day and night to save their community’s only source of drinking water.

“With the deluge of proposed hydropower dams and diversions in the Balkan peninsula we are looking at what could be irreversible environmental destruction, but there is very little awareness of this issue in Europe or globally,” states Ryan Gellert, general manager, EMEA, Patagonia. “ We hope that this film will bring international attention to the local communities fighting to protect the free-flowing rivers they rely on and educate people about why hydropower dams are an outdated, dirty technology.”

Created by Patagonia, in partnership with NGOs from across the Balkan region and throughout Europe, directed by Britton Caillouette (Farm League) and with music by Andrew Bird, the film is a powerful moment in the larger ongoing effort to raise global awareness for the Save the Blue Heart of Europe campaign. In the film and throughout the campaign, Patagonia asks people to act now and sign an online petition to put pressure on foreign developers and banks, who are funding dam-building projects, including within protected areas.

Blue Heart launches globally on 28 April 2018. The world premiere of the film will be held at Idbar Dam in Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by screenings across the Balkan Peninsula and in major cities worldwide. The film will also be available on iTunes from 8th August 2018.

About the director

Britton Caillouette has been making films in the outdoors for over a decade. A student of history with a keen eye for photography and a love for challenging production situations, he brings a unique style of visual storytelling and humanity to his stories. Britton directed his first documentary in war-torn West Africa while an undergraduate at Stanford University and has won awards for his work in both film and advertising including a Cannes Lion. He is represented by Farm League (previous Farm League films for Patagonia include The Fisherman’s Son and Unbroken Ground).