Just like everybody else, so far 2020 wasn’t the year we expected. We had to cancel Balkan Rivers Tour 5 due to the declaration of a pandemic and thought this will be the year to get a bit of rest and sort all the little things we never had time for. Well, we couldn’t have been more wrong. Shit hit the fan, especially in Slovenia where the newly formed government assigned the one of the head figures of the hydro lobby as the Minister for Environment. Instantly our lives became a full on race to share with people his plans and how he was changing all possible nature conservation and NGO legislation…and we were in constant action trying to disable these greedy politicians from selling and bulldozing Slovenian nature.
Here’s a chronological summary of what we were up to and what we will do in the near future:
Our little crew spent the winter getting everything ready for the 
It all started on March 14th when a new Slovenian government was formed in the wildest of pandemic times, after the resignation of the previous Slovenian Prime Minister. The new Prime Minister appointed a new Minister for Environment and Spatial Plannig; Andrej Vizjak, the head of the hydro lobby in Slovenia who was previously employed by Sava power plants and who for the last decade has been pushing for 10 new, very controversial dams on the Sava River in Slovenia.
Despite the obvious opposition by the general public, the government continued to push new laws and articles into anti-corona packages. This is why we started an action sending emails to members of the Slovenian National Assembly who were in power to stop the process of submitting and accepting those articles.
As if the previous moves weren’t an obvious enough attack on nature, the Slovenian National Party then submitted an amendment to the country’s Nature Conservation Act.
May 12th was the day MPs were voting on the amendment to the Slovenian Nature Conservation Act.
With the Minister of the Environment starting a dirty game of attacks, Rok opted to stay constructive and sovereign, and instead of retaliation Rok reacted to the freshly announced job application for Minister’s secretary general. We invited people to apply for this position and then after a week Rok took his application, in person, to the Ministry for Environment and Spatial Planning.
With all of this action and mess happening in just a month, the general public understandably became more and more confused and desperate, but at the same time ready to finally drop the Slovenian apathy model. We teamed up with other NGOs, individuals and civil initiatives and led the organization of an event called Za naravo ob Savo / For nature next to Sava on June 27th.
After action Za naravo ob Savo things finally mellowed down a bit and we were all in anticipation to hear a response from the Constitutional Court who received the official complaint against catastrophic articles in anti-corona laws.
Seeing the positive effects of our action Za naravo on Savo we decided to organize another action with similar concept. During Za naravo ob Sočo / For Nature next to Soča on September 19th, participants stood together against the enrichment of individuals and corporations at the expense of human health and nature.
Since early April the exposure of Balkan River Defence and Rok Rozman as a leading activist and voice of our movement, has been immense.
This year has been as crazy as it gets. Many people see it as a string of severely bad luck, rather than what it truly is: a concentration of widely and reliably predictable and connected disasters that governments and nations could have mitigated, but decided not to. Governments exploited the self-created emergency times to put whole countries in lockdown, further dismantling communities and launching full on attacks on nature or better said, what is left of nature. Things are not looking good and we need more of us standing up for nature and human rights.