Chapter 3: Croatia

(continued)

3.6 Information and Training Needs

Croatia's environmental professionals were asked to rank the information topics which are most important for their business development. Information on in-country environmental regulations was considered very important by 70 percent of the respondents, followed by information on domestic environmental problems (54 percent), information on where to find domestic partners (48 percent) and sources of project financing (48 percent). The results of the rankings are shown in Table 3.16.

TABLE 3.16: IMPORTANCE OF SELECTED ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
Environmental Information	Rating

Information on where to find domestic partners	3.7 (48)
Domestic environmental regulations	3.6 (70)
Domestic environmental problems	3.3 (54)
Sources of project financing	3.2 (48)
New environmental technologies	3.2 (41)
EU environmental regulations	3.1 (44)
Environmental quality standards for industries (e.g. ISO 14000, EMAS)	3.1 (43)
Eco-efficient and cleaner production practices	3.1 (36)
Certification requirements for environmental professionals	3.0 (43)
Domestic tenders for projects	3.0 (40)
Information on finding international partners	2.9 (37)
Announcements of domestic conferences or trade fairs	2.5 (22)
Contact information to government agencies	2.7 (26)
Announcements of international conferences or trade fairs	2.5 (22)
International environmental problems	2.4 (22)
International tenders for projects	2.3 (16)
Note: The following scale was used for the rating: 4 Ð very important, 3 Ð important, 2 Ð somewhat important, 1 Ð not important. Numbers in brackets indicate the percentage of respondents who rated the information as very important.

As shown in Table 3.17, the preferred delivery options for this information were a regular newsletter, conferences to address specific environmental problems and local business coordinators. Sixty-five percent of the respondents were willing to pay for a regular newsletter with updated project information. Also 57 percent were willing to pay for conferences, and 54 percent were willing to pay for a local business coordinator.

TABLE 3.17: USEFULNESS OF SELECTED INFORMATION DELIVERY OPTIONS
Delivery option	Rating	% Willing to Pay

Regular newsletter	3.0 (25)	65
Conferences arranged to address specific environmental problems	2.9 (29)	57
Local business coordinator to arrange meetings, contacts and workshops	2.9 (25)	54
Partnering workshops designed to introduce participants to Western partners, government environmental officials and NGO	2.8 (31)	46
Environmental Business Directory (CD diskette)	2.7 (21)	50
Environmental Business Directory (book)	2.7 (19)	54
Computer database of information resources available on Internet	2.6 (21)	42
Information research service providing specific information	2.6 (12)	47
Broadcast fax service	2.4 (9)	35
Note: The following scale was used for the rating: 4 - very useful; 3 - useful; 2 - somewhat useful; 1 - not useful. Numbers in brackets indicate the percentage of respondents which find delivery option very useful.

In the area of professional training, environmental regulations and policy was ranked as most important by environmental professionals, followed by training on environmental systems and their sustainability, environmental impact assessment and financing environmental investments. Interest in various training topics is presented in Table 3.18.

TABLE 3.18: INTEREST IN PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
Type of Training	Rating

Environmental regulation and policy	3.2 (40)
Environmental systems and their sustainability	3.1 (40)
Environmental impact assessment	3.0 (34)
Financing environmental investments	3.0 (36)
Integrated solid waste management	2.9 (29)
Project management	2.8 (28)
Environmental risk assessment	2.8 (23)
Environmental management	2.7 (22)
Environmental economics	2.7 (19)
Strategic planning	2.6 (24)
Hazardous waste site ranking	2.6 (21)
Environmental auditing	2.6 (16)
GIS (Geographic Information Systems)	2.3 (14)
Note: The following scale was used in the rating: 4 - very interested; 3 - interested; 2 - somewhat interested; 1 - not interested. Numbers in brackets indicate the percentage of respondents who were very interested in a training subject.

REC * PUBLICATIONS * EMERGING ENVIRONMENTAL MARKET 2 * CROATIA