Eastern Partnership and the final frontier

European Space Agency. Photo Credit: ESA - Jürgen Mai (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Partnership imitation?

The Eastern Partnership is the core of the EU neighbourhood policy for its post-Soviet neighbours. A Polish and Swedish initiative launched in 2009, the Eastern Partnership covers co-operation with six countries from Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus: Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The goal of the EaP is to bring partner countries closer to the EU through stronger co-operation and integration on the basis of EU values, norms and standards. The EaP aims to support reforms that contribute to the institutional strengthening and modernisation of the partner states for the sake of their citizens. These values and standards clearly refer to democracy, cultivating the idea of the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights and civil liberties.

“The Eastern Partnership is currently the only EU policy instrument for eastern policy”, said Witold Waszczykowski in April 2017 when he was Poland’s foreign minister. “It is an instrument that brings our partners closer to Europe; and it is an instrument that settles the situation in [the region].”

Adam Eberhardt, the director of the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw (OSW), is a bit more sceptical about the EaP project as a platform for a multilateral dialogue in his essay “Partnership Imitation: On the EU’s Eastern Policy” that was published in The Polish Diplomatic Review. “[The EaP] was supported by a laudable but, as it turned out, unrealistic goal of strengthening the trust and relations between particular countries of the Eastern neighbourhood, very different (despite a common Soviet heritage) in their internal dimensions and their policies … In order to avoid confrontation with Russia, the EU policy did not provide for strengthening co-operation with Eastern European countries in terms of security, including actions to settle frozen conflicts,” Eberhardt wrote. His arguments show that Europe, in the long term, has decided to opt for a slow increase of economic opportunities for its Eastern neighbours and a gradual closing of the EU’s standard of living gap. “While rejecting geopolitical ambitions, the EU Eastern Policy backed an evolutionary extension of economic and social relations,” concluded Eberhardt.

Economic grassroots

Since ambitious geopolitical objectives are not necessarily available for the Eastern Partnership in the foreseeable future, it is worth prioritising more economic grassroots activities. In this way, a social and economic transformation of the Eastern countries, striving for greater integration within the EU, could gain more support. One modern instrument for supporting economic development in Europe is the EO4SD programme (Earth Observation for Sustainable Development) which is being carried out by the European Space Agency. This project aims to increase opportunities related to collecting data obtained from satellites for Earth observation (EO) in order to implement development projects supported by major financial institutions on the regional and global level.

The implementation of the EO4SD project is to correspond to the precise strategic needs of a particular country and is carried out in three fundamental sectors: urban development, agriculture and rural development and water resources management. One part of the EO4SD is the EO4EP (Earth Observation for the Eastern Partnership) – a project financed by the European Space Agency and is addressed to the following countries: Poland, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova. The timeframe for its implementation extends from July 2016 to April 2018. The whole project is co-ordinated by the Crisis Information Centre in the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences.  

“The use of satellite imagery and our analysis should increase the use of satellite data in areas related to agriculture and water resources in countries like Georgia, Armenia and Poland. These projects are mostly designed for improving public administration,” said Jacek Mandas, the CEO of Astri Polska, one of the Polish space companies involved in the consortium. The EOPEP aims primarily to create services and goods that will operate based on EO data for development projects where the World Bank and the European Investment Bank can invest.

The EO4EP in Armenia, for example, is focused on greater effectiveness in agriculture. Currently, advanced satellite technology helps monitor yield gains and provides a warning about potential disruptions in vegetation. Moreover, it is mostly an automated process and the results of the analyses are available online. For Armenia, one important objective of the project is to have a situation where water resources are used more efficiently in agriculture. This can be achieved by using data to improve irrigation systems. The plan also assumes an extensive use of GIS type software to manage irrigation plans, monitor water collection and distribution, and obtain information on electricity consumption. The tool can also help the local administration to support both regional and national authorities in deciding the development paths of Armenia’s agriculture. The World Bank and the Polish Centre for International Aid provide additional resources to Armenia to successfully carry out these goals.

In Georgia, the satellite imagery will be used to assess the conditions of arable fields, while in Moldova it will be used to collect data in order to supervise forest areas and pasture land. The World Bank administers the “Moldova Climate Change Adaptation” programme that, together with the Moldovan National Institute for Forest Research and Development, undertakes action that works towards afforestation, remediation and raising the value of pasture land in regions that require it the most. The satellite imagery also helps protect areas of particular concern against natural threats or destructive human activity.

Forecasting danger

In Moldova and Poland satellite data is used to forecast flood risks and to carry out preventive measures in areas threatened by flooding. In Poland this takes place within the framework of the Odra River Basin Flood Protection Project supported by the World Bank which aims to protect human health, life and property from the effects of flooding in the Odra River basin. The information obtained from the constellation of Sentinel satellites of “Copernicus” (the European Earth observation programme) will be particularly useful in crisis management and forecasting the potential dangers associated with river flooding. One of the reasons for river flooding is the formation of ice dams during the winter. Ice cover also makes it impossible to use the watercourse for transportation. Therefore annual winter icebreaking activities are required on major waterways as well as constant monitoring of the ice cover. However, traditional ground-based monitoring of river ice by watching it in several designated locations is both ineffective and expensive. For that reason, as part of the EO4EP programme, the icing of Polish rivers will be investigated via satellite data, as is done in Canada.

The Earth Observation project for the Eastern Partnership further benefits Poland in two ways. Firstly, it is associated with an extraordinary development opportunity for domestic companies, and was emphasised in an interview the Polish portal Space24.pl conducted with Jakub Ryzenko, from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “We use the expertise of Polish companies from the Earth observation sector. We observe how this expertise could be a useful information tool in development programmes and, thanks to the funding from the European Space Agency, we are demonstrating these possibilities,” Ryzenko said. It is worth noting that this is also an opportunity for Polish organisations to become a regular service provider for The World Bank or the European Investment Bank (i.e., entities that implement multi-billion dollar projects in many countries that require such expert assistance). 

The EO4EP is, in essence, a demonstration of the possibilities offered by the rational use of satellite data in supporting the development of countries aspiring for better cohesion with the European Union. In this process, Polish development aid for their Eastern neighbours can be implemented by domestic companies using highly innovative tools. Additionally, such solutions enrich the portfolio of international assistance that can be offered by Polish NGOs.

Ryzenko added: “This can also be a positive tool of Polish foreign policy.” After the Law and Justice party took power in 2015, a protracted crisis in Poland’s relations with leading European allies (mainly with Germany and France) began. Perhaps the current government will be more inclined to start tempering its tarnished international image by building good relations with lesser partners from Europe’s eastern flank. This move would be in line with the spirit of the policy of late President Lech Kaczyński who included Georgia as one of the most important allies on the international arena.

Playing a positive role

What, then, can Poland offer to the countries of the Eastern Partnership? At the moment it cannot be a direct stream of financial aid. Although Poland has been developing very dynamically in recent years, it has not yet reached the level of wealth to widely finance the development of other countries on its own. Yet this may be only a matter of time as Poland may eventually find itself a leading EU country. The former foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, for instance, recently argued in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza that Poland will soon “become a net payer, a wealthy country that does not need support from the [EU] Structural Funds and pays more money into the EU budget than it gets from it … in the 2030s. This will be the Polish success – going from a very poor country in less than 20 years we are going to be promoted to the top of the EU. And only then can we afford to support, for instance, Moldova.”

Under the EO4EP, Poland is already beginning to support Moldova – even if it is not direct financing. As Przemysław Turos from Geosystems Polska noted, Poland “can and should deliver low-cost and well-defined information support and improved competences of Moldovan foresters in the field of using Earth observation systems in their activities aimed at mitigating the impact of climate change.” Modern tools, such as the EO4EP, give the Polish authorities a possibility to build a strong relationship with the Eastern Partnership countries in an intelligent way.

In the end, this can positively affect the image of our country and, at the same time, play a role in advancing the goals of the Eastern Partnership. In addition to the positive effects for Polish diplomacy, the commitment to the Earth Observation programme for the Eastern Partnership can bring tangible benefits to domestic companies, and thus stimulating the development of the national economy.

Translated by Justyna Chada

Paweł Ziemnicki is the managing editor of Space24.pl – an online portal related to space issues.

Eastern Partnership, European space agency