Noi culturi, noi antropologii - Humanitas

16.
SEEDS OF AN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
DECENTERED URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY
IN CHIŞINĂU, MOLDOVA
Amy Samuelson
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
I arrived in Chişinău, Moldova in October 2009, eager to
research the Moldovan environmentalist community. During
my first two months of fieldwork, I met with one person
after another who told me they couldn’t help me, but
that they could give me the name of someone who certainly
could. While frustrating, this gave me my first indication of
the elusive nature of environmentalism in Moldova. As time
went on, I met with leaders of NGOs, professors of ecology,
and representatives of internationally funded sustainable
development projects, but my suspicion grew that although
environmental projects are being carried out, a coherent environmentalist
community does not exist. I attributed this
to a lack of development of environmentalism in Moldova,
especially due to a lack of funds for such endeavors. However,
I suspected – or at least hoped – that there was more
to the story.
My first breakthrough came when I met with Victor, a
middle-aged nature enthusiast who gave me some insights
into the environmental community. He told me about a split
between two types of environmental NGOs in Chişinău:
those that speak Russian and those that speak Romanian. As
my research progressed, I discovered additional distinctions
between different strands of what could be called the environmental
movement in Moldova, especially between young
and old and between political and non-political approaches.
In order to deal with this lack of a coherent movement,
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