 |
DRP office overlooks the Danube
River, but the Project team don’t have much time to enjoy the
view |
The Project is part of UN's long-term commitment to achieving
sustainability in water management. After the first phase, which focused
on the analysis of national policies, legislations and institutions and
the building of networks, the Danube Regional Project has entered its second
– and last – phase dedicated to implementation, information
and evaluation.
"People think it might be just a question of funding the building of
the right type of ecologically suitable water plant, but our work goes much
further,” says Andy Garner, an American living and working in Vienna.
Andy is the Project's Environmental Specialist. His degree in environmental
policy and management and his work experience have taught him that "to
turn a river system around takes 25 years and a lot of small steps in a
very delicate and long-term process". The first step, says Andy, is
to get individual governments to think beyond their country's borders. "In
our case, too, it took some time before the single governments started "thinking
Danube Basin" and understanding the impact one country’s acting
or non-acting can have on its neighbours and even on places thousands of
kilometres away down the river. When we started the Project, we thought
it would be hard to reconcile all the different interests in the region
but, fortunately, there has been an enormous change in the heads of the
people since then. And that is what our project is about - bringing about
change".
The Danube Regional Project does not fund specific water clean-up projects;
the Project staff bring people and authorities together and organise trainings,
give advice and institutional support, monitor ongoing projects, and offer
a grants programme established under the Project. The Project's main partner,
though not the only one, is the ICPDR, which pursues networking on a governmental
level but "we enforce communication on all possible levels,”
says Ivan Zavadsky, who came to Vienna from Slovakia, his home country,
to serve as Project Manager. "We cooperate with municipalities, industrial
and agricultural sectors and NGOs – groups of people who are personally
interested in improving the environment they live in. And we have the impression
that this was a good way to strengthen the civil society in some countries”.
One of the focal points of the Danube Regional Project is to support the
countries in the Lower Danube: Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnia-
Herzegovina, which get limited resources from the EU and in fact need a
lot of support in order to fully play their part in the regional cooperation.
These countries do not only get funding from the Project to attend trainings
- all sectors are invited to participate, to establish their own priorities.
The Danube Regional Project assists them in developing their own capacities
and processes. "We plant ideas, make them circulate and stay around
long enough to see if they work or need adjustment – then we retire
slowly. Sustainability is our focus,” says Zavadsky, "and we
want to make sure that the institutions established are strong enough to
carry on the ideas once our Project is finished in 2006”.
Since the UNDP/GEF takes a global view and recognizes many regions that
need to be supported, the Danube Regional Project might be the last in the
region to be financed by UNDP/GEF. On the other hand, UNDP/GEF is an important
factor in Southeastern Europe. Its position is unique in the sense that
it has a huge moral authority in these countries that had for years been
dominated by Moscow and are now undergoing a complete and often painful
process of transition towards democracy and market economy. Over the past
few years, there has been a change in the level of participation; while
previously the Upper Danube countries tended to dominate the discussions,
all countries now feel equal and participate actively in the process.
The Danube Regional Project office is situated in the UN-compound in Vienna
overlooking the banks of the Danube River. But the six people working on
the Project have little time to enjoy the view. "We have worked hard
over the past two years on planning, investigating, preparing, structuring
our work to build up a network. Now it is time to take a look around, to
communicate about our work to the public," says Project Administrator
Kari Eik, a Norwegian trained in political sciences. Same as Andy Garner,
Kari Eik talks enthusiastically about her work and what her team hopes to
achieve. Both Project team members agree that "we are not a bank, we
don’t want to be bureaucratic; we want to be as open as possible to
all people and authorities to implement a healthy environment in the Danube
River Basin. Danube Regional Project is not a mechanical thing; it’s
management, communication, bringing all kinds of people together, you know,
environmentalists with ministers of industry. There is a high potential”.
Since communicating to the public about the Project now takes centre stage,
the Project supports the establishment of Danube Day as one way to achieve
that goal. Danube Day, which is launched for the first time this year to
mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Danube River Protection
Convention, will be celebrated throughout the Basin on June 29th this year
with various public events and activities accompanied by a strong media
presence. It should become institutionalised as a regular annual event.
The Danube Regional Project has a sister project based in Istanbul –
the Black Sea Regional Project. As Andy Garner emphasizes: "Every river
basin in the world has similar structures in spite of some regional variations.
Every basin, no matter by how many countries it is shared, has to set priorities,
deal with a certain ‘water budget’, find structures. The countries
sharing it need to learn from each other, compromise, and - most importantly
- ‘think basin’ as we like to say. We have learned a lot from
the situation in the Danube Basin and we can now develop a model and that
could be used in other river (and sea!) basins”.
Further information:
www.icpdr.org/undp-drp