flumen researcher Lilian Pungas gave a lecture on 7 November 2019 at the University of Vienna, at the Institute for Political Science as part of their lecture series “Ecological Crisis in Eastern Europe”. Lilian’s lecture was titled “Subsistence farming under high voltage power lines and next to oil shale power plants in Eastern Estonia”. 

Globally seen Estonia extracts of the oil shale, this resulting in very high ecological footprint per capita. For the sake of energy security from its Eastern neighbor (oil shale covers 90% of Estonia’s electricity demand) it accepts as a country an ecologically extremely high price for the extraction of one of the most polluting fossil fuels. Paradoxically, the oil shale extraction itself takes place in Eastern Estonia near Russian border in the region of Ida-Virumaa, where most habitants belong to the Russian-speaking minority, which suffered disproportionally in the 90s due to different economic reforms and the 1992 citizenship law.