Title: Friction Year: 2019 Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro) Author & Copyright: From top to bottom: Wake Up Films, Dragana ŠĆEPANOVIĆ
A TALE OF BEAUTY AND CORRUPTION:Sinja(je)vina, From a Territory of Life to a Territory of Destruction? Northern Montenegro
Sinja(je)vina is a huge limestone plateau, over 400 km2 in area, which together with Durmitor makes up more than 1,000 km2 of continuous mountain pastures, the largest in the Balkans and one of the biggest in Europe, that provides home and livelihood to over 250 families of mobile pastoralists and small farmers.
For hundreds of years, if not thousands, the herders and farmers of Sinja(je)vina, which is known by both names (with and without the ‘je’ between parenthesis), have governed, protected and cared for their grasslands, as one would protect one’s own family. Organized as a cluster of different pastoral commons, they are responsible for the conservation of a landscape whose special value and unique biodiversity has been recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere reserve among others.
Title: Position of Sinjajevina and its main transhumant roads
Year: 2021
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Sandra Kapetanovic and Pablo Domínguez (inset courtesy of Google Earth Engine).
Purity
Title: Purity
Year: 2019
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Wake Up Films
On some days in Sinja(je)vina, it looks as if no one has ever been there. Unspoiled slopes as far as the eye can see, gloriously green during summer, and dazzlingly white during winter! No footprints visible to the non-expert eye, no sign of human destruction. And yet, humans have lived there for millennia. It is just that we are not used to witnessing such a delicate human touch, one that nourishes instead of depriving…
This purity must be what care looks like.
Care
Title: Care
Year: 2019
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Wake Up Films
Sinja(je)vina is a huge limestone plateau, over 400 km2 in area, which together with Durmitor makes up more than 1,000 km2 of continuous mountain pastures, the largest in the Balkans and one of the biggest in Europe, that provides home and livelihood to over 250 families of mobile pastoralists and small farmers.
For hundreds of years, the herders and farmers of Sinja(je)vina) have governed, protected and cared for their grasslands, as one would protect one’s own family. Organized as a cluster of different pastoral commons, they are responsible for the conservation of a landscape whose special value and unique biodiversity has been recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere reserve.
Connection
Title: Connection
Year: 2019
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Nikola LUČIĆ
On some days in Sinja(je)vina, it looks as if no one has ever been there. No footprints, no sign of human destruction. And yet, humans have lived here for centuries and even millennia. It is just that we are not used to witnessing such a delicate human touch, one that nourishes instead of depriving.
The cliffs watch over practices passed on from generation to generation.
The people of Sinja(je)vina live to the rhythms of sheep chewing the cud, the daily milking, the passing clouds. They periodically give thanks that all of this is part of their lives through different rituals: Sinja(je)vina is one of those rare places where people haven’t forgotten that they are one with the land they live in.
Destruction
Title: Shapes of an apple
Year: 2019
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Ministry of the Defense of Montenegro
But it has always happened though that someone sees heaven and feels like eating the apple. In 2019, the government of Montenegro decided to officially decree a military training ground in a great part of Sinja(je)vina with the support of important NATO members, apparently unconcerned about the immeasurable damage that this would bring upon its unique people and ecosystems.
The pollution, the noise, the danger and the interdicted access to their pastoral lands, would ruin local communities’ traditional ways of life, and that of their ecosystems, which depend directly on their practices of pastoralism. There can be no peaceful coexistence between protectors and destruction.
Title: Destruction
Year: 2019
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Dragana ŠĆEPANOVIĆ
Local communities’ protection
Title: Protectors
Year: 2018
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Wake Up Films
Local communities decided not to sit and wait in silence, to see their millennia-old way of life erased from the face of the earth by just one State decree. They peacefully fought with diplomacy and activism and they managed to protect for now the beauty of Sinja(je)vina from bombing and shelling by artillery. A heritage of immense natural and cultural value, that is part of the UNESCO Tara Biosphere Reserve, and took thousands of years to evolve across hundreds of generations of herders, may be destroyed in just a few years. The members of the community want to be involved in decisions concerning their territory, they want clear guarantees from the government that the region would be non-militarized and that they would not be alienated from their traditional way of life and their way of conserving nature.
More even … they want their way of life to be supported and enhanced! With such a goal they seek powerful allies, and a chorus of voices to speak up for them, and save this unique place that up to present they have cared for from devastation or simply gradual disappearance.
Title: Living testimony (Ljiljana Šaranović and Novak Dragović).
Year: 2020
Place: Sinja(je)vina, Montenegro
Author & Copyright: Wake Up Films
In November 2019 an international research team informed UNESCO in Paris, as well as the European Parliament and the European Commission in Brussels, about the case. In February 2020 the EU Parliamentary Committee for Stabilization and Association with Montenegro visited the country’s capital, Podgorica, and its President met with the local communities, experts, NGOs and politicians supporting Sinja(je)vinans, to get a first-hand account of their pain, their complaints and their claims. This was a crucial step for them; having the EU express itself and compel Montenegro to meet specific criteria, in order for Montenegro to be accepted as part of the Union.
Title: Mission Possible
Year: 2020
Place: Sinja(je)vina, Montenegro
Author & Copyright: Latte Creative & Land Rights Now with the support of Wake Up Films, Save Sinjajevina Association, International Land Coalition, ICCA Consortium, Common Lands Network and numerous other individual citizens.
Their battle is everybody’s battle, for there aren’t many places left where nature and culture flourish in a symbiotic bond as they do in Sinja(je)vina. If the area is part of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Tara River Basin and borders two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, why isn’t it treated as such? Why destroy Sinja(je)vina or ignore local communities’ conservation capacity, challenging and jeopardising it’s overwhelming resilience, instead of learning from its people how to protect not only one specific ecosystem, but, in fact our entire planet?
Last December 5, in the midst of subzero temperatures and hostile climatic conditions, the communities prevailed once again. After 51 days of a protest camp set up by local community members and rights groups in the heart of the Sinja(je)vina military ground, the planned training and bombing was cancelled and the new defence minister of Montenegro announced that they were going to reassess their military training ground plan.
Title: Freedom
Year: 2020
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Wake Up Films
The celebration was immense, and all protagonists felt a great surge of hope and enthusiasm when the news of the halting of military training and reassessment of the military plan came through, but many Montenegrins feel this is just a temporary reprieve and they insist that locals’ and activists’ initial demands be met:
1 – That a decree of law be issued, cancelling the previous one in 2019, which officially inaugurated the military training ground in Sinja(je)vina. They accept that the word of the Defense Minister alone is excellent news and a valid declaration of intentions, but all of this will remain just paper if it does not become legally binding.
2.- That a decree of law be issued for the creation of a protected area designed and governed with the full participation of the local communities, as they with their traditional pastoral activity are the main guarantors of these ecosystems and unique landscapes.
Title: New horizons
Year: 2018
Place: Sinja(je)vina (Montenegro)
Author & Copyright: Wake Up Films
A story that we could all learn a great deal from. So try reading it out loud.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the local communities for their constant collaboration in telling their story and enabling us to learn about their territory, and most especially the family of Marjan and Mileva Jovanovic from Katun Okrugljak, as well as the University of Montenegro for their support in informing us about the characteristics and values of this territory of life, and Wake Up Films for their constant support in connecting us with local communities and providing key imagery. The research on which the section of Montenegro is based, has been particularly possible thanks to the support of the IRIS project (Inspiring rural heritage: sustainable practices to protect and conserve upland landscapes and memories), ANR-20-JPIC-0003, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 6995327, within the framework of the JPI Cultural Heritage call.
Text and composition by Pablo DOMINGUEZ, Petar GLOMAZIĆ, Milan SEKULOVIĆ and Jorge PELLICER