2.4 Riesgos Ambientales, Amenaza y Vulnerabilidad
2.4.2 Identificación de Riesgos
“Strug Valley” as a collective action phenomenon started by the establishment of a telephone cooperative – one of the fi rst independent telecommunications operators – is the effect of transformation, and as such it brought about autonomy and liberty. The system transformation opened the gates for “Strug Valley”, creating an external framework for its appearance.
The political and economic system changes of 1989 enabled citizens to take up free initiatives, and it was hoped they would bring about some positive results. Recalling that period, the founders of “Strug Valley” underline the extraordinary enthusiasm for work. “It was a common fervour, to change and do something for the commune, which was not easy to do earlier! There had been a magnitude of neglect, indeed! […] We wanted to set off, work, and act!!!”
The telephone initiative was a continuation of work for the local community in our new circumstances, in our new institutional environment. Therefore, we can say that the changes of 1989 were not the fl ywheel of social activity. It was already underway. The change was mainly about transferring the activities from the opposition to legitimate local government institutions. For the activists, it was a natural transition from behind the scenes, informal involvement in social work, to an empty scene of local politics.
All of the village-mayors and commune heads of Błażowa, Chmielnik, Hyżne and Tyczyn (the “Strug Valley” initiative group) elected during the fi rst local government elections in 1990 entered the system transformation with a load of experience in often long-term opposition cooperation during communism. All of them (and also some of the councillors) acted in one of the “Solidarity” factions – workers and peasants. Thanks to that, they were vested with the relations and bond capital developed on their ground.
The most important link constituting a point of contact for individuals and their connections net was the aforementioned Józef Ślisz – a peasant activist, later vice-speaker of the Senate (1989-1993). Ślisz is an icon – both to Podkarpacie (organiser of farmer strikes), and to the whole
nation (the only representative of southeastern Poland invited to the Lech Wałęsa Citizen Committee, consisting of 135 intellectuals and advisors). He was the chairman of NSZZ “Solidarność”, conducting negotiations during the so-called Round Table with communist authorities on the conditions of giving back the power. He is remembered as a charismatic leader who gathered opposition activists and a highly respected mentor – a visionary but pragmatic. He pointed out the method of implementing the telephone cooperative idea, bringing the American and Canadian solutions to Podkarpacie. He was the man linking the local cooperation network. Later on, he played the role of an intermediary with whose help the local networks could reach farther into the environment. For example, as vice- speaker of the Polish Senate, he helped break bureaucratic barriers placed against the then founded independent telephone cooperative.
Thus, in 1990 the local political scene was populated by people working in already formed cooperation networks and equipped with the capital of common knowledge, enabling the creation of a common ground. They were also equipped with the particular, “preserved”, Galician self- governance ethos.
“Strug Valley” did not emerge from nowhere. It was deeply rooted in the Galician understanding of self-governance. The transformation at the beginning of the 1990s did not cause the erosion of the previously formed understanding of roles. You might say that there was an adoption of a new institutional system provided by the transformation. However, the traditional, Galician understanding of self-governance has not changed, not to the leaders, to whom governance still meant working for the local community which has not withdrawn the permission for the leaders to take up initiatives in its favour. It was confi rmed by the fi rst local government election results – the power was given to the ones who had already worked for the common wealth.
In “Strug Valley” we are dealing with a trust based network construction bringing together regional leaders (mayors, village heads, and local government offi cials) rather than an actual public-private partnership. As one of our interlocutors stated: “We have not even been aware then that it would later be called a public-private partnership. And we have been in this business before! We were creating an information society, setting up the Internet at schools, when practically there was almost no Internet in Poland”. The telephone cooperative among communes was not based on any formal document of cooperation. At least no one recalls signing any “pacts” defi ning the roles and responsibilities of each partner and specifying the rules of cooperation.
In this model, there is no room for inter-sector cooperation understood as local governance, since it is based on the network of socially committed actors, for whom the local government was an area and tool of action. As a result of the transition of the civic commitment potential to the local government sphere, the traditional defi nition of the third sector makes no sense anymore. Its dimensions shrink. However, not because it is out of the present consideration (in the “Valley” there was consent for local community based initiatives), but because the local government looked from both perspectives at the same time. And thus, there was no need for additional, rank-and-fi le, broad initiatives. The newly created order was a kind of a hybrid local government and social work system.
The further history of “Strug Valley” is a story of evolution from a network system to other forms of action. The history of the “Valley”, after the telephones were installed, seems to give evidence to the collapse of the Galician model infl uenced by its collisions with requirements and restrictions of the contemporary public affairs management methods, and probably with tough free market rules as well. We will try to reveal it in the next section.