Western Balkans Environment Programe

The main goal of capacity building activities is to promote implementation of protecting environment and managing natural resources plans/policies and investment projects based on sustainable development, as well as to demonstrate concrete results of benefits of good environmental management to local communities through concrete demonstration projects.

This segment of the project envisaged, as its first step, development of the initial assessment that will determine:

• The areas where institutional strengthening and capacity building is necessary
• The thematic areas for implementation of demonstration projects.

Possible initiatives to be implemented include:

• Strengthening the local governments, in terms of human resources and their capacity to develop and implement local environmental policies and investment projects. 
• Facilitating the participatory development of local plans and programs such as physical or urban plans, regional development plans, management plans, and specific infrastructure projects.
• Capacity building for the municipal employees in charge of implementation of the environmental impact assessment.  The goal here is two-fold:
  • ensure that Mojkovac municipality EIA focal point is properly trained in the area, familiar with the best practices, and in time considered the knowledge base for his/hers colleagues in the region;
  • facilitate information sharing and partnership between the regional and municipal EIA

The expected outputs are:

• pilot projects in the area of environment protection, sustainable development and management of natural resources implemented (taking in consideration local environmental policies and plans);
• Mojkovac municipality EIA focal point trained in the area of EIA;

Another aim of this activity is to enhanced regional co-operation through improved information sharing process and improvement of professional consultancy services regarding good environmental management. Therefore, the database of national practitioners who are competent to carry out consultancy services regarding good environmental management will be established.  The first step in accomplishing this goal will be the market research of those institutions and individuals competent in carrying out the environmental impact assessments.  The second step will be capacity building for those selected.  The third step will be information sharing and capacity building for both the municipal employees in charge of the EIA and the selected experts from the database in order to form the effective partnership between those who are likely to be in charge of implementing the EIA in Montenegro and those who will be their municipal partners.     
The expected outputs are:

• establish and build capacity of national hub of expertise in the area of environmental management;
• creation of a knowledge base available to local/national authorities for use for environmental management studies and standards, but also to other donors and private sector.