DREPR Serbia

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Announcement
- All stakeholders, agricultural institutions, slaughterhouses and associations who wish to participate in DREPR Project, can now send their letters of interest or applications to DREPR Project Implementation Unit (DREPR/PIU) in Belgrade. Detailed information can be received by phone +381 11 363 16 75, PIU (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management). Contact person is Dr. Nenad Brkic, Lead Agriculture Engineer DREPR/PIU Belgrade.

Main Project Activities

All project activities will be implemented within the following three components:

Component 1. Regulatory Reform and Capacity Building . The project will support policy and legal reforms that target the reduction of enterprise nutrient pollution, and support SAM in its goal to gradually harmonize its environmental laws and regulations with those in the EU aquis. The project will also build technical capacity on the part of MPNRE – EPA, MAFWM and other institutions with legal mandates for enforcing water quality standards.

Component 2 . Investment in Nutrient Reduction . Under DREPR, investment support will be provided for agricultural sector, notably to pig and cattle farms, slaughterhouses, and meat processing industry that are nutrient pollution hotspots. The eligible activities to be supported under the project include: manure management, wastewater treatment, improved manure disposal, storage and use practices, and, in turn, farm nutrient management practices, resulting in the reduction of nutrient discharge into the River Danube and its tributaries.

Component 3. Awareness Raising and Replication Strategy. The project will carry out public information campaigns at the national and local levels to raise public awareness on nutrient containing waste management and water pollution, and their impact on public health, economy and ecosystems. The project will also institute on a pilot basis a “Public Environmental Information Sharing Scheme” in which information on pollution emissions from agroprocessing industry and their potential impact on public health and the economy would be shared with the public in an easily interpretable manner. The aim is to use the public pressure to force the big polluters to improve their compliance with the environmental regulations.

DREPR in Practice

Serbia Danube River Enterprise Pollution Reduction Project (DREPR) is financed under the GEF-WB Investment Fund for Nutrient Reduction in the Black Sea/Danube Basin. The preparation of the Project was executed by the Ministry of Science and Environmental Protection – Directorate for Environmental Protection and the implementing agency is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management of the Republic of Serbia .

Geographical focus: At the meeting of the Project Advisory Technical Committee, presided by the Ministry of Science and Environmental Protection – Directorate for Environmental Protection, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management, Secretariat for Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Secretariat for Environment and Sustainable Development of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, the regions selected for the implementation of the DREPR Project were Požarevac and Šabac in Central Serbia, and Novi Sad and Vrbas in Vojvodina.

Objectives of Project

The proposed Project will aim at increasing the prevalence of and promoting environmentally friendly practices in the Danube Basin, covering practically the overall territory of the Republic of Serbia. In particular, the objective of this project is to reduce nutrient load discharged into the River Danube and its tributaries from livestock farms, notably pig and cattle farms, as well as the reduction of the nutrient discharge from slaughterhouses.

Main polluters - Nutrients

What are Nutrients: Nutrients are nitrogen and phosphorous compounds whose surplus runs off to water currents causing algae bloom which in turn suffocate the water flow, resulting in polluted, foul smelling water in such water currents, unsuitable for bathing and drinking, and massive die off of living organisms such as crayfish, fish or aquatic plants due to oxygen depletion in such water.

Origin of Nutrients: Nutrients originate primarily from cattle, pig and poultry excrete popularly referred to as manure and slurry.