SPECIAL PROGRAMS
JAPAN SPECIAL FUND The Japan Special Fund (JSF) supports feasibility studies of marketable projects and provides limited financial assistance for project implementation. The JSF promotes cooperation between its sponsor, the Japanese government, and the REC to improve the health of the environment during the region's transition to a democratic, market-based economy.
This is accomplished by supporting environmental research projects, developing regional plans for environmental improvements, identifying relevant projects and holding seminars on specific environmental topics. In 1995, the Japan Special Fund started two feasibility studies, one on hazardous waste management in Siaulai, Lithuania, and the other on the environmental rehabilitation of the Ziar Valley in Slovakia. The Fund also initiated a project, at the request of Poland's Ministry of Environmental Protection, to formulate a strategy that will restore water quality to the Utrata River.
LOCAL OFFICE AND OUTREACH TEAM LEADER Alexander Juras presented the findings of the NREC feasibility study at the Sofia Conference.
NEW REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL CENTERS The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe has been so successful at promoting public participation and the development of civil society within an environmental framework that there is considerable interest in setting up a similar organization in the New Independent States. REC assisted this process in 1995 by completing a needs analysis and feasibility study that was presented as an official background document at the Sofia conference. This report showed a real need to establish a REC-like organization in Moldova, Russia and the Ukraine. As a result, both donor and recipient countries agreed to support the development of new regional environmental centers in Moldova, Russia, the Ukraine and beyond.
AS A RESULT OF THE FEASIBILITY STUDY, both donor and recipient governments pledged to support the establishment of new regional environmental centers in the NIS.
DOBRIS ASSESSMENT REC disseminated information products originating at the other "Environment for Europe" conferences to its constituents in Central and Eastern Europe. The REC distributed complimentary copies of Europe's Environment - The Dobris Assessment, a comprehensive study of the state of Europe's environment that was conceived at the Dobris conference and prepared by the European Environment Agency Task Force, to 3,300 public and university libraries, environmental media organizations and key environmental NGOs.
EAP TRANSLATIONS The REC also completed an initiative to translate into fourteen languages and distribute the abridged version of the Environmental Action Programme for Central and Eastern Europe (EAP), a document that environment ministers adopted at the second "Environment for Europe" conference held in Lucerne, Switzerland in 1993.
REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER * ANNUAL REPORT 1995