Last week and at the beginning of this week, in most parts of Serbia, according to data from measuring stations, we were breathing “very polluted” air. Now we are a little better, because there was less rain and finally the wind started blowing, but the problem with pollution remains and we do not see that serious work is being done to solve that problem. Aleksandar Macura, co-founder and programme director of RES Foundation, spoke about this in the “Nova ekonomija danas” show.
We did not say that no work is being done on solving air pollution in Serbia. However, we can all see, smell and feel the results of the work done so far.
“Our problems are not unknown to other countries, however, the concentration of our problems is probably unique in the world. We have started to do something, but with this quality of social management and the absence of responsibility, we will not achieve the result. The responsibility for this to a large extent, at least for initiating some procedures, lies with the public health sector. We all know how much power they have, but they have a legal responsibility, which by now had to initiate a health risk assessment, the law provides it; therefore let the people from the public health sector show us that they initiated analyzes and recommendations, so that they transfer their part of the responsibility to someone else. It would be good if everyone did as much as they could in their domain, because we have no other way to achieve a good result, if we don’t want to taste the air on our palates,” says Macura.
Macura adds that public policies that would bring good air affect almost every area of life, mostly in energy and are mostly related to energy consumption, traffic, thermal energy in households. He emphasizes that Serbian society is a society in which responsibility is amnestied both in the professional, political and criminal-legal sense, and not only in the field of environmental protection. He says, if there is no responsibility or if you have a feeling of irresponsibility that is prevalent, change is difficult to happen.
Watch the entire conversation in Serbian language on the following link: