To put work on fisheries issues in perspective in Poland, and to learn from other examples, FISH organised a December Best Practice Workshop “Hitting the wall: how to affect public opinion on adversarial issues” at the Sea Fisheries Institute (MIR) in Gdynia, Poland.
The workshop was attended by 23 people, representing 17 Polish NGO groups. The main objectives were to provide best practice examples of how to affect public opinion on adversarial issues in general, and to initiate a practical and usable framework for working on the opinion on fisheries issues, particularly the CFP reform process in Poland in 2010/2011.
Invited keynote speakers from civil society movements shared their successes and experiences, as a tool for the workshop participants to expand their knowledge on how to work with public opinion on controversial issues in Poland.
The list included Anna Urbanczyk, a representative for the Campaign against Homophobia (Kampania Przeciwko Homofobii), who addressed the difficult journey of raising awareness on the adversarial LGBTQ (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer) issues in Poland, an area of continued tension among that society.
The most powerful campaign of KPH has been a 2003 billboard campaign “Let them see us”, depicting thirty gay/lesbian couples holding hands on billboards propagated in Warsaw, Krakow, Sosnowiec, and ‘Tricity’ (Gdynia, Gdansk, Sopot).
Although the campaign was successful in the end, it was fraught with protests, vandalism and shaming. Receiving a lot of media attention, the campaign was successful in stirring up a debate and raising the issue off the ground.
A current billboard campaign “Love Does not Exclude’ draws attention to the lack of regulations in Polish law regarding same-sex unions, and although it has been tolerated, meaning, no more overt vandalism there is still a very long and difficult road ahead.
Another speaker, Bozena Wawrzeska, of the Women’s Congress (Kongres Kobiet) addressed the way forward within the women’s empowerment movement, an adversarial area fraught with many preconceptions and stereotypes relating to gender roles and values.
Ms. Wawrzecka used the most recent example of affecting change within the Polish public by describing a journey to introducing ‘gender parity rights’ in Poland. Gender Parity rights, a relatively new term in the Polish vocabulary pertains to a civic draft law ensuring equal representation of men and women in access to the electoral roll within politics.
There have been no standards set so far to maintain gender equality in political representation. The election on this draft law took place on 3 December, where the Sejm passed a quota of 35 percent parity rights for women in access to the electoral roll. Clearly, much work is still required to achieve a 50/50 divide between men and women; however, this is a very promising step towards reaching that goal and a tremendous success.
Tying the above mentioned efforts to fisheries issues seems counterintuitive until one looks at the resistance of the Polish public to shift away from the traditional way of thinking within environmental matters.
Environmental issues have since the beginning been adversarial and controversial in Poland, although last years have seen great strides to amend this through actions and hard work of our partners and other environmental organizations.
Within fisheries specifically, it has been just as challenging to shift public opinion from the current status quo to that of an environmentally conscious society. Krzyszof Skora, from Friends of Hel, has clearly demonstrated this in his short presentation.
The network of Polish organizations interested in sustainable fisheries and marine protection has broadened significantly since 2007, and non-governmental organizations working on behalf of fisheries in Poland started to speak with a united voice.
Currently four of FISH’s partners are members of the OCEAN2012 coalition, which has been a great force in raising awareness on issues pertaining to the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, an area of limited knowledge among the Polish public.
Organizations such as ClientEarth, made up of activist lawyers committed to a healthy planet, have recently established an office in Poland and have great interest in working with marine sustainability issues.
The workshop illuminated that passion, persistence and continued commitment to tackling adversarial issues in Poland is a way forward to reach the hearts of the people.