Mission Statement

The mission of Green Alternative is to protect the environment, biological and cultural heritage of Georgia through promoting economically sound and socially acceptable alternatives, establishing the principles of environmental and social justice and upholding public access to information and decision-making processes.

Our Work

We organize our work around six thematic and four cross-cutting areas. Thematic priority areas include: energy – extractive industry – climate change; transport sector and environment; privatization and environment; biodiversity conservation; waste management; water management. Cross-cutting priority areas include: environmental governance; public access to information, decision-making and justice; instruments for environmental management and sustainable development; monitoring of the lending of the international financial institutions and international financial flow in Georgia. Another increasingly important area of our work, where Green Alternative was a front runner among Georgian NGOs, is the European Neighbourhood Policy and EU-Georgia Action Plan.

Green Alternative’s work consists of project-focused and policy campaigns. We are targeting large-scale development projects with detrimental environmental and/or social impacts. With varying degrees of success, in all cases, Green Alternative’s involvement has brought changes to particular projects and policies, as well as to the degree and ways in which civil society and affected communities were involved in decisionmaking processes. In each project or policy campaign Green Alternative combines the campaign work with capacity building of the local groups and facilitates their direct involvement in the campaigns.   Green Alternative cooperates with non-governmental organizations both inside and outside Georgia.

Green Alternative’s current advocacy campaigns among them include campaign on hydropower development projects that pose significant threat to environment and local communities, campaign on transportation development projects, campaign on transparency of privatization processes, as well as policy-level campaign targeted at newly introduced amendments to environmental legislation granting project developers undue exemption from environmental liability.

History

In 2010 on the initiative of Green Alternative Georgian Green Network was established. This is informal association of civil society organizations and experts dedicated to protecting environment, promoting sustainable development and fostering principles of environmental and social justice in Georgia.

In 2006 Green Alternative founded an independent forest monitoring network.  Since establishment Green Alternative is a member of CEE Bankwatch Network – one of the strongest networks of environmental NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe. Green Alternative closely cooperates with various international and national organizations and networks working on environmental, social and human rights issues; Green Alternative is a member of the Coalition Transparent Foreign Aid to Georgia founded in 2008.

Since 2005 the organization has been a member of the Monitoring Coalition of the ENP (European Neighbourhood Policy) Action Plan.

In 2004 Green Alternative received the Goldman Environmental Prize as the recognition of organization’s incredible work for environmental protection, social justice and equity.

Since 2002 Green Alternative has been monitoring implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline project, its compliance with the policies and guidelines of the international financial institutions, the project’s impacts on the local population and the environment.

In 2001 Green Alternative, along with other local and international non-governmental organizations, founded a network of observers devoted to monitoring of development of a poverty reduction strategy in Georgia.