Report of the 4th Meeting of the Advisory Committee for the Capacity for Climate Protection in Central and Eastern Europe Project

April 9-10, 2002

Convened at the premises of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), Szentendre

The 4th Advisory Committee meeting had the following objectives:

to present the results of the third phase of the project
to summarize the main outputs of the whole project
to evaluate the project
to discuss future activities

Mr. Toni Popovski, Executive Director of the REC, welcomed the participants. He expressed his gratitude for the donors' support of the project which enhanced the process of Kyoto Protocol implementation in the Central and Eastern European region. In his speech, he emphasized the potential contribution of climate change mitigation to sustainable development.

I. Presentations of the results of the third phase

In Session 1, the NGO partners presented the results of the last stage of the project, "Access to Information and Public Participation in Policy Decisionmaking in the field of Climate Change". The presenters were:
Mr. Zbiegnev Karacun, Institute for Sustainable Development, Poland;
Ms. Michaela Dupleac, Terra Mileniul III, Romania;
Ms. Biliana Petkova, EnEffect, Bulgaria;
Ms. Sonja Orbtalova, Energy Center Bratislava, Slovakia;
Ms. Helene Poltimae, SEI, Estonia:
Mr. Robert Fidrich, Hungarian National Society of Conservationists, Hungary.

The subsequent discussion touched upon two groups of problems. The first set of problems are the result of country-specific issues which are beyond the scope of the national surveys and national reports. The second group of problems addressed the overall situation in the region and must be analyzed with the intent to identify similarities and differences between countries.

a) The country-specific issues discussed were:
In Poland some of the private facilities approached did not answer the questions as to the amount of their GHG emissions. There is no legal mandate to reveal such information to the general public.

Romania was the first country to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. It was a gesture of good will intended to demonstrate Romanian commitment towards EU Accession.

In the Estonian case one can observe a peculiar inconsistency. Though procedures for Joint Implementation acceptance do not exist, there are as many as 21 AIJ projects in the country. The explanation is that Estonians started to implement the concept of Joint Implementation well before the COPs. Since their earliest projects were successful, other Estonian project developers began to replicate them.

Slovakia is not a signatory to the Aarhus Convention, but there is a special law regulating access to information;

Hungary is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, although it has set up the necessary institution framework.

b) The members of the Advisory Committee meeting also discussed the problems of public participation in policy making and access to information from the regional perspective:

With ratification of the Kyoto Protocol approaching, NGO coalitions will start playing a crucial role in awareness raising among policy-makers and the general public. Information dissemination is the most important among the relevant activities. While disseminating information, the regional NGO's not only experience a lack of funding but face low demand for this information from the public as well. For example, complaints about the environment in Poland constitute less than 1% of all complaints in the governmental mail. Capacities for information dissemination are unsustainable at the moment. Climate Change Focal Points lack reader-friendly short summaries on the main climate issues. Such publications could be provided to the interested public in the form of leaflets and brochures.

In order to reach the target groups inside countries, information should be provided in order to make the links between global and local problems apparent. There are no offices in the region for focused information distribution, although there are people currently working on such a scheme.

Not only can cross-country comparisons be made but different stages of implementation of the Aarhus Convention and Kyoto Protocol can be compared as well. The forthcoming regional report will compare the commitments under both treaties.

In the sphere of climate change one meets several conflicts of interests. Traditional conflicts between NGO's and governments are present along with some more specific conflicts. Governments traditionally avoid contacts with NGOs. None of the NGO partners is a consultant to the respective government. However, Terra Mileniul III is sometimes involved in the Romanian Ministry of Environment's activities. Conflict of interests can also be observed between different spheres of environmental protection.

Ministries of environment in the region are rather weak. Thus, they are seldom able to lobby for their case. At the same time, other policy-makers consider the Kyoto Protocol another burden for the economy and the unstable institutional background aggravates the situation. In particular, the directives from EU are not always consistent. Some participants suggested that learning the lobbying process from the United States could be useful. There was a counter-argument that Europe and the US are too politically; hence, CEE cannot learn much from them.

II. Summary of the main outputs of the project

Zsuzsanna Ivanyi presented an overview of the whole WRI-REC project, "Capacity for Climate Protection in CEE." Project results are included in the summary document distributed during the meeting. Also, Peeva (EnEffect, Bulgaria) and Zbiegnev Karacun (ISD, Poland) presented their experience of co-operating with REC and WRI through this project from the partner NGOs' point of view.

III. Project evaluation

Andrew Buchman presented the results of the survey. The questionnaire asking to evaluate the project was distributed among the Advisory Committee members, NGO-partners and project management team. For the structure and more detailed evaluation, see the slides of the presentation available on the REC's Website.

Overall, the work of the project tem on various aspects was assessed from "at least average" to "excellent". The dispersion in the assessment was caused by the difference in perception of the classic dilemma: "breadth vs. depth." Some partners were satisfied both with the scope of the project and with the depth of analysis. On the other hand, some participants considered the scope of project to be too large, resulting in insufficiently deep analysis.

While discussing the entries of the questionnaire, the emphasis has been made on the impact of the whole project, direct as well as indirect:
Klemenc from E-Forum, Slovenia, pointed out that Slovenia strengthened communication with the Ministry of Environment but it failed to involve more stakeholders from the government and businesses.

During the three years of the project, understanding of the institutional needs and the importance of the role of NGOs in the decision-making process increased in the region.
NGO-business dialog is the challenge of the next stage. Celac, Romania, informed the participants that in April 2001, a forum between traditional antagonists - NGOs and businesses - was organized and useful synergies between the two were identified.

While discussing the outreach activities, several observations were made:
The media should be more involved as they are the direct route to the politicians and it is even worthwhile to create a special sub-programme to work with media; the choice from the menu of outreach activities should be made according the needs of a country and different types of outreach activities should be employed on the national, regional and local levels; the main task of the outreach activities is to promote the global point of view, to send a message that a country is a part of the world, that it not only has to bear the burden of various requirements but also contribute to the process.

IV. Future activities

Zsuzsanna Ivanyi presented the REC's futures plans related to the climate programme. A short summary was distributed during the meeting. The proposed activities are to focus on three main areas:

Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in the CEEs

Energy efficiency and clean technologies

Promotion of understanding on climate related issues and increase of public awareness
All comments and remarks by participants underlined the importance of the proposed activities. In the context of the Kyoto Protocol it was stated that the CEE countries are not satisfactorily prepared for instituting Joint Implementation. There are gaps in the legal systems, institutional and human resources. Furthermore, much more has to be done to involve the business sector. At the moment this sector has only a general knowledge about climate change problems and possibilities. It is necessary to provide them with more detailed and factual information. It was proposed that concrete messages have to be sent to business people and incentives for their active involvement have to be elaborated.

It was also stated that CEE countries have to prepare for emission trading in the near future, as the scheme will very likely be implemented in most of them. The realization of Joint Implementation seems to be less attractive, though it would result in real emissions decreases. Due to the EC standards related to GHGs, BAT will be obligatory for the accession countries, so the condition of additionality of JI will not be met. Detailed comparison and country-specific analyses on the preparedness for the Kyito Protocol implementation would be very interesting. The CEE countries have to keep in mind that both ET and JI should be supplemental to domestic policies and measures to mitigate climate change related harmful effects.

Although the issue of technologies resulting in the reduction of the GHGs was considered highly important, there was not much discussion of it. What was stressed is the importance of renewable energy sources. More information and studies would be needed in this field.

Much was said about the promotion of understanding of climate related issues. A common problem of the CEE countries is the low level of knowledge among the decisionmakers on climate problems. A broad national campaign would be needed to raise public awareness so that then society might influence politicians. The role of the media is not satisfactorily used; there is also a need for more documents and pamphlets in national languages. The outreach activity has to be country specific. There always exists a dilemma: should the approach be deep or broad. What is most important is to increase the demand of the public to access the environment related information, so flexibility should be maintained. There is also a need by the national partner NGOs to exchange their experiences. In the field of education, it was proposed that new areas such as industry and local governments be involved in the future.

Finally Zsuzsanna Ivanyi expressed her thanks for the AC members for their support and active participation in the AC meetings. Thanks were also extended to the partner NGOs for the excellent job they did during the REC-WRI partnership and contributed to the fulfillment of the targets and the successful completion of the project.