On 11th July 2013 TEMA, along with other 60 CSOs’ representatives took part in the closing event of TACSO, ‘Civil Society Experiences through TACSO Living Library’ held in Turkey. For this event, CSO representatives became live ‘books’ in the library and told their stories and experiences. TEMA chose to tell the story of ENV.net network, explaning why compliance with environmental acquis is an important topic to be deepen and work on. TEMA also explains the idea behind the ENV.net project, the CSOs survey results and what are the next steps.
On 20th June 2013, the ENV.net representives from Serbia were invited to give an interview at the local radio station – Radio Beograd 1. The main objectives of this one-hour talk was to familiarize the listeners with the ENV.net project and to explain some of the main findings of the questionniare distibuted to CSOs during the inception fase.
More than 120 participants were present at EnE13 conference/ENV.net Roundatable organized by the Environmental Ambassadors for Sustainable Development on the 10th of June, 2013 in Belgrade, Serbia (see the presentation here). The main messages of this event were that environmental sector activities should be knowledge-based and that education for environment and sustainable development should be a priority. Capacities and continuity are very important for inclusion of environment in other sectoral policies.
This conference was institutionally supported by the Ministry of Energy, Development and Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Natural Resources, Mining and Spatial Planning, as well as National Commision for UNESCO.
During the conference the national coordinator of the ENV.net project for Serbia, presented the results of the questionnaire conducted during the inception phase of the project (see ENV.net survey summary Serbia).
On 28 June Co-PLAN participated on behalf of ENV.net to an open exhibition named “Good examples of renewable and energy efficiency usage in Albania and in the Region” organised by one of the environmental organization in the country in the framework of the European week for Sustainable energy (22-28 June 2013). Environmental NGOs were invited to contribute through exhibiting their previous projects related to energy issues for the wider community in the nearby of the Artificial Lake park in Tirana.
The aim of the exhibition was to inform and make citizens aware of how to save energy consumption and reduce financial costs. Also presentation of previous experiences in the country and region would serve to increase more initiatives of this kind through including collaboration of the wider
community.
On 22-25 May 2013, CO-plan participated on behalf on the ENV.net to the first edition of the Environmental film festival organised by the Ministry of Environment Forest and Water Administration, in collaboration with EU Delegation in Albania and the support of other international organizations, in 6 cities of the country. This edition was composed to show Albanian and foreign short films concerning all environmental themes, aiming to make aware the community to protect the environment in Albania. Opening day of this festival (22 May 2013) corresponded with the World Biological Diversity Day.
Co-PLAN participated in this festival with two short films: 1. Pet 127-Plastic Emergency Albania Film; and 2. The state of traffic mirrors the state of the society. Also during the last day, Co-PLAN participated at the environmental NGOs fair with posters from different environmental projects and several publications in years.
On 23rd – 24th May 2013 the Regional Conference “CSF Framework for Partnership Agreement Inception Conference” was organised in Belgrade at Palace of Serbia. During this Conference, ENV.net presented its strategy (see ENV.net presentation) and to address the following priorities in the future:
Strengthened capacity and efforts to provide analysis, advocacy and monitoring of key sector reforms at regional and national levels;
Improvement of the environment for civil activism and state-civil society dialogue at regional and national levels
Improvement of the legitimacy, transparency and accountability of CSOs in the region
ENV.net partners actively participated to the different work-groups organised during the conference which were very useful also to know better the other networks working under the FPA Civil Society Facility.
On 21st-22nd May 2013,ENV.net partners organised a meeting in Belgrade before the Inception conference to discuss about the activities implemented during the inception phase, agree on the strategy and the workplan up to the end of the 2-year phase of the project, and prepare the presentation of the ENV.net to the EC Inception conference.
During this meeting there was also the opportunity to talk about and agree on the structure of this ENV.net website to which all ENV.net partners will contribute with relevant contents.
ENV.net partners started a mapping exercise in February to systematize existing information and gaps regarding relevant actors working in the environment field in each partner’s country. The following step was the preparation of a common questionnaire to be delivered to all identified CSOs working in the environmental field in ENV.net partners’ countries. The questionnaire was prepared in English by punto.sud and all partners contributed on making significant changes and finalising it on the platform of Google.docs (see here). Partners were then asked to translate it in their languages directly on Google.docs platform. All partners submitted the questionnaire via email to all identified CSOs working (not exclusively) in environmental field (in some cases, CSOs have been preliminary contacted by phone to explain the reasons, modality and deadline of the questionnaire). A summary of the results of the survey is available for each ENV.net partner’s country:
On the 22nd and 23rd of January, just after the kick-off conference, the ENV.net members met in EEB office in Brussels for the 1st partnership meeting. This event was crucial for the creation of the project steering committee, the identification of each organisation’s strengths and added value for the project purpose and the definition of a detailed work-plan for the project inception phase.
During the meeting an information session on the environment acquis was organised by EEB staff for the benefit of ENV.net members. It was quite interesting as it provided an insider view from an organization (EEB) that is really active and experienced in this area. While explaining all 10 chapters of Environmental acquis, project partners were interested to understand the EU priorities. It was agreed that nature protection, horizontal legislation and climate change chapters vested the higher relevance, at the moment, with regard of the all EU countries. This seems due to several reasons. Among them: the non fulfilment of standards even by EU countries and the absolute need to increase further implementation and monitoring for these themes.
During the meeting an information session on EC administrative requirements was delivered by punto.sud and financial guidelines were distributed to partners for the project management. Finally MoUs between punto.sud and the 5 partners were signed.
On 21st January 2013 the ENV.net representatives participated to the EC kick-off conference organised by DG Enlargement in Brussels to allow the 18 networks working under the Framework Partnership Agreement signed within the EU Civil Society Facility programme to know each other.
The main aim of the conference was to create synergies between the different networks for joint activities within the programme.
ENV.net members had the opportunity in particular to know better the other networks working on environment and energy sectors – i.e. Environmentally Sustainable Socio-Economic Development of Rural Areas (ESSEDRA), South East Europe Sustainable Energy Policy (SEE SEP), Advocacy NGOs networks for sustainable use of energy and natural resources in the Western Balkans and Turkey – and to present the ENV.net project objectives and expected results.
