In recent years, the meaning of June has changed in Bulgaria. What used to signify the start of summer and leisure time has now come to represent water shortages, scarcity, drought, and discomfort. Rositsa Kratunkova explores how marginalized communities and neighborhoods are hit hardest, sparking a new wave of environmental justice struggles.
*
This June, around 100 cities and villages were without regular running water, and last summer, the number was as high as 600, impacting 500,000 people — about 8% of the population. Unlike in previous years, when only villages were affected, midsize cities are now suffering the consequences of intensifying droughts coupled with failing water infrastructure. Faced with this problem, which many perceive as a return to pre-modernity, people are taking to the streets to demand action from the authorities.
In some cases, already stigmatized populations are blamed for the drought and infrastructure problems, suggesting that worsening climate breakdown will exacerbate existing divisions among social and ethnic groups. Can the protests for running water be considered a new wave of environmental justice movements, or do they represent another phenomenon?
What is environmental justice?
Examining the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, the primary tool for tracking such issues, reveals that water-related conflicts in Europe primarily involve hydroelectric power plants, dam construction, and water contamination. In a few cases, these conflicts have affected Roma settlements in villages cut off from the main water supply, as seen in Hungary and Slovakia. While interruptions in running water have not yet been recognized as environmental injustice, they have sparked significant social mobilization in Bulgaria over the past two years.
Since its inception in the 1980s, the scope of environmental justice has widened considerably. Initially, the term was coined as a critique of environmental movements in the US, which were considered too abstract and unrelated to people’s lives. Instead, the concept proposed designating the struggles of communities of color against environmental pollution and risks, which disproportionately affect them. Since then, the concept has broadened beyond the distribution of hazards, extending materially, spatially, and politically. Today, environmental justice claims include multidimensional, interlinked aspects of injustice related to distribution, recognition, and participation. Political ecology and environmental justice clearly overlap since environmental injustices are rooted in capitalist accumulation processes and power structures that privilege certain social classes. Processes of socio-environmental change are never socially or ecologically neutral; rather, they are inherently contradictory and create conflict. In other words, environmental transformation is not independent of class, gender, ethnicity, or other power struggles. In the context of environmental justice, access to a healthy environment and fundamental public infrastructure must be available and affordable regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, etc.
Recently, research has deemed it essential to consider all three dimensions of justice. First, distribution concerns how environmental impacts are distributed across the population in time and space. Second, procedural justice, or participation, requires that communities have access to information and a say in decisions and issues that affect them. Third, recognition refers to acknowledging the collective identities, histories, and social inequalities of individuals and groups within the political community.
I will address these dimensions when analyzing the protests for access to water infrastructure that occurred in Bulgaria in 2024.
The water sector in Bulgaria
Water protests for access to infrastructure have sporadically occurred on a small, local scale, mainly in villages or small towns. However, in 2024, there was an increase in these types of protests, which can be explained by the extreme drought and failing infrastructure. According to data from the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute (NSI), only 2.78% of the population experienced water shortages in 2022, primarily due to the significant amount of water used for cooling electricity production plants. In 2023, the percentage of the population affected by water cuts rose to 4.6%, and in 2024, it increased to 7.6% (using data gathered by the Green Party).
Most of the water infrastructure was constructed during the socialist era, when the percentage of urban and rural areas connected to the network increased from 18% in 1946 to 81% in 1985 (NSI). Access to tap water at home was a symbol of modernity and served an ideological purpose of socialism by promising a better quality of life and bridging the rural-urban divide and the divide between different ethnic groups. Pipes physically connected domestic spaces to water authorities, continuing the symbolic bond between a paternalistic state and its citizens.
After 1989, Bulgaria underwent a rapid and massive restructuring of the water sector. As Segond (2024) explains, this restructuring occurred under pressure from the World Bank and the EU’s cohesion policy, which imposed a neoliberal environmental agenda on the state. These changes have led to deepening inequalities between regions, insufficient sector funding, and a loss of expertise and capacity to maintain infrastructure. Consequently, certain areas now experience over 80% water loss, and some water companies lack hydro engineers entirely. The average age of those employed in the sector is over 50, and the salaries are below average, leading to a lack of interest in the profession.
Distribution
One factor that has aggravated the water situation is climate breakdown, which has led to prolonged droughts in a country that is already poor in terms of fresh water sources. In 2024, water levels fell by 72% compared to the previous year, and in certain areas, such as the Danube plain in the north, levels dropped by a staggering 82%.
Unsurprisingly, popular unrest was concentrated in the areas most severely affected. Climate breakdown does not impact all areas in the same way or with the same severity. Thus, the distribution of environmental consequences is unequal. Northern Bulgaria is less economically developed than the capital and other cities in the south. In fact, it is one of the poorest regions in the EU. Water prices there are among the highest due to the extensive use of electricity for the water supply.
Those protesting the water cuts complain about the unequal distribution of available funding, which prioritizes some areas over others.
Participation
The 2024 protests against water cuts articulate the inhabitants’ frustration at being left behind in the modern era, akin to being sent back to the 19th century. This situation is incompatible with the EU and the Schengen area. In certain places, mayors joined the protests and sent letters to ministries. In Pleven, a city of 92,000, the municipal council sent a declaration to the president, parliament, and government, demanding concrete steps to improve the water supply.
Recognition
The protests received significant media attention, and for the first time, Parliament voted to establish a temporary commission to investigate the drought and develop strategies to combat it. Politicians acknowledge the role of climate breakdown and infrastructure problems, and agree that more investment is needed. At the same time, however, they describe the water issue as apolitical – a topic that unites us all – and say that we should look for a common solution that overcomes political and party divisions.
The consequences of the lack of water
Behrin Shopova (2021) describes the long-term consequences of the lack of water in her hometown of Omurtag, which has 7,600 inhabitants and has struggled with water scarcity for the past 50 years.
Health: The inability to maintain good hygiene has physical and psychological effects.
Economic: lack of investments and job opportunities in the city.
Social and migratory: People sell their apartments and move to cities with a better water supply, or emigrate abroad. Some migrants visiting relatives cut short their visits due to the lack of water.
Ethnic: Changes in ethnic composition – Bulgarians and Turkish people living in Omurtag who can afford to leave are replaced by a poorer Roma population looking for cheap housing.
Scarcity driving ethnic tensions
Water scarcity can also escalate tensions between different ethnic groups, exacerbating an already complicated situation. This is evident in Sliven, a city of around 83,000 inhabitants, and one of its Roma neighborhoods, Nadejda, with around 10,000 inhabitants. The Roma are accused of lacking a ‘culture of water usage’ and of wasting water that they do not pay for. Meanwhile, water losses in the region exceed 80%, and water shortages are an everyday reality.
The Nadejda neighborhood is physically and symbolically cut off from the city by a concrete wall and surrounded by an industrial zone. The social and territorial stigmatization is amplified by the discourse of politicians who describe Nadejda as a ‘zone without laws and rules’ and as a dangerous place, further amplifying the existing perception of Nadejdans as deviant others. The racialization of the neighborhood is used by the water company and authorities to exclude Nadejda from water infrastructure projects. Consequently, Nadejda’s water access is cut off every evening at 8 p.m. and restored in the morning under the pretext that the Roma do not pay their water bills. In reality, however, the water company’s former director revealed that the cuts serve to provide sufficient water quantities to the surrounding industry.
In November one municipal councillor of the right-wing party organized a protest against the increase of the price of water by 20%. This change was demanded by the water company since the lack of rainfall meant the levels of the dam were too low to be exploited and water had to be pumped from the underground using a lot of electricity. Despite this justification, the protesters still demanded that the Roma from Nadejda start paying the water they use, turning their discontent to a population that already has very limited access to water.
New wave of environmental justice struggles
The water protests in Bulgaria demonstrate that climate breakdown, coupled with failing infrastructure, has given rise to a new form of environmental justice struggle. The distribution of consequences from a lack of regular water access is unequal among the population, exacerbating existing economic, social, and spatial inequalities. In some cases, highly stigmatized, racialized populations are blamed for the drought and dysfunctional infrastructure, suggesting that worsening climate change will exacerbate existing divisions among social and ethnic groups.