VIENNA, Jan 31 (IPS) - Faced with economical and political instability, ecological parties in Eastern Europe are struggling hard to keep environment protection on top of the agenda as they try to win the confidence and votes of a disillusioned electorate.

Except in the case of Georgia, where the local Green party has become one of the strongest in the parliament, in many other East and Central European countries they are battling for the votes that would give them the power to influence policies.

''When people are disillusioned, it is very difficult to convince them that environment is important,'' says Dusan Bevilaqua, a senior leader of the Green Party in Slovakia.

Beviliqua's appraisal of the situation was echoed by many of the green party delegates from East Europe who gathered here over the weekend to participate at the congress of the European Greens.

The congress -- the first ever since the European Federation of the Greens was formed last year in Helsinki -- discussed the Greens' strategies on the upcoming polls for the 518-seat European Parliament.

The support for ecological groups vary within each country. ''In areas where the environmental situation is serious, there is support for us,'' Beviliqua told IPS.

The situation is very different even in those cases where the ecological groups played a significant role during the 1989-90 period when popular disenchantment toppled East Europe's communist governments one after another.

''There was a boom of ecological movements in Eastern Europe (during that period),'' said Juan Behrend, general secretary of the Green parliamentarians group at the European Parliament. ''They (those in ecological groups) were intellectuals...the likes to whom people were attracted...they were seen in many countries the way the Church in Poland was looked upon...''

Apart from the general political opposition they afforded, the disregard to the environment by communist authorities also attracted the population to the green movements -- some of which eventually became political parties. In Hungary, there are more than 800 green groups, Georg Droppa, co-chair of the Hungarian Green Alternative party said.

But while Droppa's party failed to convert the popular support into votes and enter parliament, greens in the then Czechoslovakia managed to surpass the three percent cut off point to the Slovakian parliament in the 1990 polls. They failed, however, to enter the federal and Czech parliaments because of the higher cut off point of five percent, Bevilaqua said. But as the market reforms started to bite, pushing up the prices of basic foodstuffs leaving many unemployed, the priorities of Eastern and Central Europeans changed, and so did the fortunes of the Green parties -- even if the bad environmental situation remained the same.

In an opinion poll conducted last October in the now independent Slovakia, just 22 percent of those interviewed said they are interested in the environment. Yet 55 percent of Slovakia's population of 5.2 million lives in a ''polluted environment'', claims Bevilaqua.

Similarly, in Yugoslavia, where the political scene is dominated by nationalist Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the environment is in bad shape.

Committee member of the New Green Party, Branka Juvanovic, said heavy use of artificial fertiliser has damaged 80 percent of that country's soil, while the high concentration of dangerous gases and heavy metals in air, soil and water has resulted in a high child mortality rate, cancer and respiratory diseases.

The Berlin based Ecology-Economy research institute says the high concentration of lead, cadmium and zinc in the Upper Silesian region in Poland has resulted in a child mortality rate of 17.6 per 1,000, compared to 7.7 in France.

The problem with cleaning up the environment is of course costs. The Ecology-Economy Research Institute estimates cleaning up the air in Central and East Europe -- excluding the republics of the ex-Soviet Union -- alone would cost 400 billion German.

The West initially assured assistance to clean up the mess, but with economic stagnation and unemployment stalking industrialisedcountries, the emphasis has shifted to ventures that create jobs back home rather than those purely environmental in nature.

A clear demonstration of the change in Western policy is in the nuclear field. The West originally wanted the more than 50 nuclear power plants, which used Soviet built reactors, to be closed down, but of late aid is used to upgrade the safety systems using western technology, which environmentalists claim is nothing but a move to prevent the western nuclear industry from going bust.

For Yugoslav Juvanovic, who sees ''no chances of entering parliament under present conditions'', the proliferation of private enterprises add to the problems posed by the war in former Yugoslavia. ''There are about 50,000 private firms and with sanctions in force, nobody knows what is imported, whether they are detrimental to the environment etc.''

But those like Droppa of the Hungarian Green Alternative are prepared to fight to save at least what is left. ''We have found that bio-diversity in some areas is very rich, richer than in many other European countries,'' he said. ''We should have the chance to preserve it for future generations.''(END/IPS/EN-RP/SR/CPG/94)

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