Today in Iceland, myself and the rest of the CELL group visited Iceland’s largest environmental non-governmental organization, Landvernd. Upon arriving at Landvernd’s offices, we were greeted with smiles and immediately got to talking about what Landvernd does pertaining to environmental issues in Iceland. I was very curious to see what kinds of projects environmental groups in Iceland try to tackle, considering they are a country that is looked up to in terms of climate action and environmental protection.
Being the largest environmental NGO in Iceland, there was a lot of ground to cover. Landvernd explained that they involve themselves in everything from setting up environmental education programs in schools to putting on beach clean-ups throughout the country, but their biggest goal right now is creating a new national park in the central highlands. The central highlands of Iceland make up about 40% of Iceland’s landmass and provide habitat and pristine views for all of the country’s inhabitants (landvernd.is). As we speak, opposition for the proposed national park in the highlands comes from energy companies who want to dam up rivers within the highlands and flood habitat to create a more reliable hydroelectric energy supply. According to Landvernd, this electricity isn’t needed for the people of Iceland, but would only benefit the big industries that occupy aluminum smelting factories on Icelandic soils.
Hearing how passionate and optimistic the women who presented to us were about the upcoming challenges in regard to the national park gave me a reminder that there is hope. Corporate interests and a broken economic system seem to consistently place mountains in front of environmental accomplishments, but we win some and we lose some. In this case, it’s looking like a win for Landvernd, and I am so thankful to have been able to hear their story on how they made the progress they had regarding the proposed park in such a short amount of time.
Gina McCrackin
