Preface

The REC Public Participation Training Project reinforces the REC's ongoing commitment to increasing public participation in environmental decisionmaking. The Training Project is an outgrowth of the expertise gained through several years of REC policy research and cooperation with environmental leaders throughout the region on public participation issues, and following the development of a series of REC public participation workshops and materials, including a Manual on Public Participation in Environmental Decisionmaking, and a report on the Status of Public Participation Practices in Environmental Decisionmaking in CEE.

The REC's ongoing activities and research in public participation in environmental decisionmaking has documented and illustrated well the need for capacity and institution building to promote public participation at all levels of the environmental decisionmaking process, on the part of individuals and institutions of all sectors of society, private and public alike -- from government officials and authorities, to NGOs and community organizations, to business and industry, to the general public and individual citizenry. REC's 1995 regionwide Status Report of Public Participation Practices in Environmental Decisionmaking in CEE identified a variety of barriers to public participation in the region, including:

a lack of willingness and openness of authorities to make environmental information available or decisionmaking processes transparent and accessible to public involvement and scrutiny;
a lack of awareness or understanding among the general public or citizens of their basic rights;
a lack of experience or knowledge among the authorities or citizenry of methods and techniques to facilitate or ensure public involvement, respectively; and,
a lack of collaboration and cooperation both between and within sectors on environmental decisionmaking.

These issues are all obstacles to effective involvement of the public in environmental decisionmaking processes, and require increased local capacity either through awareness-raising or skills-building initiatives to overcome. The Public Participation Training Project is one attempt by the REC to address these local needs.

The Public Participation Training Module for Bulgaria is the product of extensive effort by a team of individuals consisting of both REC staff and local partners. The contents are the product of a cooperative effort that began in 1995 among Magda Toth Nagy, Alexander Kodjabashev, Jiri Dusik and Marietta Diankova. Special thanks goes to this group which identified the core contents of the module and has been involved throughout the project. Alexander Kodjabashev was responsible for the difficult tasks of researching and writing the legal components of the materials. Chapter 8 is based on materials prepared by Krassen Stanchev of the Institute for Market Economics and offset with materials provided by Macrin Desa of Ecosens, Bucharest.

Thanks also goes to the Union of Bulgarian Foundations and Associations (UBFA) for organizing the first test of the materials and to the Environmental Management and Training Center (EMTC) in Sofia for organizing the final translation of the module and the training of trainers. Oreola Ivanova, Rossen Roussev and Sylvia Magyar at REC also played a key role in the translation, layout and production of the printed materials.

I would like to thank all of these individuals for their contributions and support.

Lee Davis
Project Coordinator

REC * PUBLICATIONS * AWAKENING PARTICIPATION * PREFACE