Support for Building National Capacity for Sustainable Environmental Management
Background
In a post-conflict and transition society, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina is today, the issues of environment and environmental protection are often not seen as priority among other more visible and more burning issues. This combined with insufficient national capacities, results in today’s situation that in BiH environmental issues are not given the attention they deserve. There is a serious and realistic concern that BiH is loosing precious time and that it is falling further behind, instead of taking immediate actions on protecting our environment from additional deterioration.
On the other hand, the country has chosen integration into European Union as its top priority and on that road it will have to meet all of the EU environmental protection and sustainable management standards. This means that in relatively near future, BiH will have to meet numerous and most demanding European environmental standards, which with today’s capacities and attention paid to the issues is not very likely to be achieved. This proposal is also aiming to benefiting from the global awareness created in the last year around the issues of global warming and climate change. It has became rather obvious that the climate change is happening in front of our eyes at rate much faster that anybody had foreseen and general public in BiH is also starting to pay more attention to the environmental issues and to demand more information.
The aim is to use that positive attention and build up on the momentum created, and by doing this position UNDP as qualified advisory service provider and capacity building specialist, in place to support the relevant national authorities in response to the public demand.
Intended project beneficiaries
Awareness and understanding of MEAs and their requirements/mechanisms could be improved within the government and both private and public sectors. The Government is often positive about MEAs, but lacks an objective information base, needed for deciding on the key questions and full understanding of the requirements for implementation.
The direct beneficiaries of the project are key national stakeholders from the Council of Ministers, GEF Focal Points, Members of the Parliament, Entity level ministries personnel through activities within the framework of the project such as capacity building and awareness raising. The project will also benefit broader public, academia, non-governmental and private sector through the conference outreach.
Objectives
The primary goal of this proposal is to ensure effective and efficient support of UNDP to building of the national capacities for sustainable environmental management. The environment field in Bosnia and Herzegovina suffers from serious lack of capacities but also from the lack of public awareness and the public pressure demanding progress on environmental issues. Environment is not seen neither by decision makers nor by the general public as one of the areas of national priority and as a consequence the progress in this field has been slow.
Achievements and Expected Results
- Increased national capacity for sustainable environmental management and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs);
Increased awareness of key national stakeholders on importance of environmental issues and actions needed;
- Strengthened in-country capacities for strategic policy advice and support to the Government;
|