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Vides Vēstis (Environment Word) is a monthly journal dedicated to the relationship between people and the environment, about culture, ecology, nature and all efforts to protect and preserve the Earth. The magazine is published by the Friends of the Earth Latvia (VAK).

"What might be the most miraculous thing under the sun we ever manage to achieve in our lifetimes? Perhaps only to be with and help those who are most in need? Not just any river, tree, or bird, but your very own people. Not just the all-suffering Earth, but also - your own Soul. May the calling to "seek out and save those who would perish" be not just written on our flags, but also in our hearts.

Vides Vēstis wants not just to listen, but also to find and bring together those with the divine gift of devotion and ability to give in the name of a bright green beginning. We endeavor first to call together our own ranks, like we did at the start of the Awakening. The same Awakening which we, the Greens, rang in with our audacious black-white-and-black and green-white-and-green marches. The same Awakening which glowed in the maroon-white-and-maroon barricade bonfires and cried out in the joy of new-found freedom. The same Awakening which, before our very eyes, died from a combination of blind faithlessness, KGB-mania, and finally, the money-starved free market economy. Those who rang in and called together the Awakening indeed share responsibility for all that is transpiring today.

This is precisely why Vides Vēstis must become the new alarm bell - like it was in that distant green inception of the environmental protection movement, when we came together to clean up our towns and countryside, sat around bonfires to save our sacred grounds, to save ourselves. From loneliness, from the regime, from fear, from lack of faith."

VAK Chieftain Arvids Ulme
in the inaugural issue of Vides Vēstis, 1997.

Remember - living is good, living green - even better!