Natural Protected Areas in Montenegro: making the best of EU opportunities through partnership with Italian parks

Natural Protected Areas in Montenegro: making the best of EU opportunities through partnership with Italian parks
 
Formez, an Italian institute for training and support to Public Administrations, is currently carrying out in Montenegro a training course on management of protected areas. The activities are financed by the Italian government in the framework of the programme for “Innovation and Cohesion of Central and Local Public Administrations in South Eastern Europe countries”, a regional cooperation programme started with a first phase in 2004 under the coordination of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The programme supports the strategy defined by the Italian law n. 84/2001 (Provisions for the Italian participation to stabilisation, reconstruction and development of the Balkans”) and covers four different areas of intervention: Protection and enhancement of the cultural heritage, Civil protection, Management of protected areas and natural parks and Communication for public administrations. Along with the Republic of Montenegro, the other beneficiary countries of the programme are: Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia.
 
The operational second phase of the programme - which is called “Development and Strengthening of Central and Local PA”- started its activities in Montenegro in June 2007, with a two days seminar held by Formez and eco&eco srl (an Italian research and consultancy unit dealing with sustainable development and natural parks issues) at the Grand Hotel in Cetinje. The seminars focused on the comparison between Italian and Montenegrin protected areas systems, with case-studies analysis and workshops. Among the participants there are managers and members of the staff of the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental protection of the Republic of Montenegro and of various local authorities, managers and staff of National Parks and of other protected areas of Montenegro along with representatives of some local NGOs. The subject of the this second phase training was agreed in March 2007 between the Deputy Minister Mr Siniša Stanković and Formez representatives. Mrs Lazarela Kalezic, from the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental protection, is the contact person for the project activities.
 
The second training unit, which took place from the 5th to the 7th of September, in Cetinje, was aimed at introducing to the participants the methodology of Project Cycle Management and the Logical Framework Approach, according to the European Commission operational guidelines issued in March 2004.
 
The unit included also seminar on financial opportunities in the environmental field and on current and future cooperation activities available to Montenegro. Mr Enrique Aguado Asenjo, Programme manager at the European Agency for Reconstruction (EAR) in Podgorica, delivered a detailed presentation about the functioning of the IPA programme in Montenegro explaining the mechanism of multi-annual programmes and giving the participants some very interesting guidelines for project planning. Mr Christian Melis, presented the activities of the Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea resulting from various memorandum of understanding between the Italian Ministry and the Montenegrin Ministry of Tourism and Environment Protection.
 
After the presentations of Mr Aguado Asenjo and Mr Melis, Mr Francesco Silvestri, from Eco & Eco srl (Italy) senior expert for Formez and Mr Zeljko Lekovic, senior task manager for infrastructure, in the EAR’s Podgorica office, joined the panel of discussion. During the debate, the participants had the opportunity to ask the experts several technical questions related to project planning and co-financing from the IPA programme and to discuss, with the experts and among themselves, various possibilities of project planning in the field of nature conservation. This discussion has been very useful with regard to one of the main objectives of the training course, namely that more cooperation projects are established between Montenegrin natural protected areas and other similar institutions in Europe.
Silvia Fracchia – email: sfracchia@formez.it