大象传媒

I got some strange looks last week tramping through Faro airport carrying a pair of wellingtons. Outside, the sun was blazing and there was no mud in sight. The boots were the legacy of my - some 12 days and four countries later it seemed a long while since I fell in that bog.

But the odd looks I got weren鈥檛 half so quizzical as the look as I would have given myself - had that been physically possible - when I caught myself reading in my guidebook about a system of agriculture in northern Portugal, where people farm shifting sand dunes.

鈥淭hat sounds interesting, I鈥檇 like to see that,鈥� I thought to myself, before doing a double-take. Agricultural systems were not something I鈥檇 found fascinating before. But they say travel broadens the mind.

Since I鈥檝e been back in the urban landscape of Brussels I鈥檝e been reading your comments, and they鈥檝e prompted some thoughts. There鈥檚 also a correction and a clarification to get off my chest.

Green romance

I think Richard is spot on. Returning to Bucharest, rather starry-eyed from my encounter with the hillside herdsmen, I did reflect that however romantically quaint the encounter, it was more important that Ion鈥檚 son should have all the opportunities that Europe can offer. I asked myself whether it was better that this (perhaps non-existent) offspring stayed on the hillside frightening off bears, like his dad, or had the chance to end up, say, as a correspondent in Brussels for Romanian TV. Preserving mosaic agriculture may not help create this opportunity.

Of course, the European Commission would say its aim was precisely to get the balance right between keeping the countryside as it is and making sure that people who work the land can make a good living.

But Richard raises a wider concern: is environmental protection driven by romance? In all the countries I visited, people in the countryside claimed that many environmentalists lived in big cities and saw the rural landscape as a sort of reservoir of peace 鈥� a contrast to the lives they actually lived. Standing on the hillside in Romania talking about the need to preserve mosaic agriculture, the words of the Polish headmaster came back to me: 鈥淓urope wants us to be a theme park.鈥�

This worry is more acute when you look at Europe as a whole, particularly because the new countries that joined in 2004 and 2007 are, on the whole more rural, with a less developed infrastructure than Western Europe. In Britain and Germany we destroyed the forests that covered the land more than a millennium ago. Who are we to tell others not to build the cities and roads and bridges that generate wealth? Or should we admit our past was a mistake and strive for a better balance in these countries?

Already it is clear that this is a big argument. One claims that in Eastern Europe the environment has been 鈥渟hockingly marginalised鈥�.

Manmade habitats

Several people thought I had fallen down on my duties by not spelling out whether the European Union was financing the bypass expected to go through the . Apologies for that. As so often with the EU, the facts are hard to pin down. The best I (and the Commission) can do is: the bypass itself has received no specific funding, but the road it is part of, the Via Baltica, has. So far in Poland a part of the road north of Warsaw has got just over 140m euros. The Polish government is applying now for funding for three other stretches of the road: it could get up to 1.2bn euros.

So, in short, the bypass itself won鈥檛 get any EU money. While some of you feel that is the crucial point, that isn鈥檛 the case legally: the EU has stopped the road because it breaches a directive on the environment.

It is perhaps important to reflect on what is being saved.

It鈥檚 a bit pass茅 to call environmentalists 鈥渃onservationists鈥� but it鈥檚 a good word. Many do want to conserve the status quo. All three of the special habitats I looked at were, to a greater or lesser extent, created by man. Most of the environment in Europe is made what it is by farming. But at what point do we shout: 鈥淔reeze!鈥�

Doubtless, environmentalists would have wanted to stop the British enclosure system which gave us the hedgerows and their birds. No doubt much was lost even earlier, when grasslands were ploughed up for farm land. What marine species were lost when Holland was rescued from the sea?

On I asked Guido Schmidt of whether in 50 years鈥� time his successors would be arguing to save the strawberry farms because a rare sort of butterfly had learnt to thrive on them. He laughed, and said that technology had reached such a pitch, and such fundamental changes could be made by man, that what was left untouched had to be saved.

The European Union, like all political institutions, has to perform a constant balancing act. Its commitment to preserve a diversity of species and habitats couldn鈥檛 be clearer. But EU money is one of the major engines of development, funding new roads and dams and the like. Brussels faces heavy pressure from well organised and well funded worldwide lobby groups, which are determined that the environment should be the main priority. Perhaps emotive, cute, animals are used to push the commission to put the environment, not development or wealth creation, at the top of its agenda.

Hand milking

A correction and an apology, I wrote that . It is not. The commission points out that there is no specific rule banning milking by hand. The regulations are aimed at clean milk and, 鈥淭echnically when hand milking is done properly, hands do not touch the milk.鈥�

But up on that hillside there was no running water and no electricity and I do wonder whether Ion鈥檚 milk, and indeed his hands, 鈥渃omply with clearly-defined hygiene rules in order to avoid any contamination.鈥�

The commission does, however, say: 鈥淪pecial conditions may be granted by the competent authority to take account of traditional production methods.鈥� And the Romanian government says it will allow hand milking to continue.

So finally on to the question of my depiction of Romania raised by Regina. First of all, Ion and his friends are not gypsies or Roma. It wouldn鈥檛 matter to me if they were, but it鈥檚 a straight fact. The more important point is that Regina feels that by showing such images I鈥檓 perpetuating a damaging stereotype.

I do understand that Romania is not all antiquated farms and cute carts. While I was there, my suitcase broke and in the search for a new one I can testify that the hypermarkets are uncannily identical to those in Belgium, and the luxury shopping malls rival anything in Leeds or London.

I know that the country has a long record of achievement and the young people are particularly skilled in sciences. But none of this is relevant to a piece on preserving the environment.

But that鈥檚 an easy get-out for me. The point is, Romania is a bit different, at least to Western European eyes. Journalists in general remark on what is different, strange, striking. It is important we put what we find into context and don鈥檛 leave readers or viewers with the idea that the exception is the norm.

But during my few days in Romania I passed 40 or 50 horse-drawn carts on the roads. They are very common. You don鈥檛 see that in Berlin or Birmingham. Actually, you don鈥檛 see it in Spain or Italy. I鈥檝e never seen it in my travels to Turkey or Kosovo. So Yes, we will show pictures of this. Because it鈥檚 unusual, and makes the point that a sort of agriculture unchanged for centuries still exists here alongside others. It鈥檚 not an attempt to demean Romania.

A Romanian colleague who was a tour guide in Ceausescu鈥檚 time tells me one of their duties was to stop Western tourists taking such pictures. One of the reasons that this particularly nasty dictator destroyed villages and herded villagers into half-built tower blocks was that he was obsessed with the fear that the outside world saw Romania as backward, and he wanted it to look modern. Let's not go back to the old ways.

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