GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL FACILITY

11. Project Objective

The project’s objective is to assist nine Danube river basin countries, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina, to operationalize and institutionalize public access to environmental information and public participation measures in support of reducing transboundary pollution from the discharge of nutrients and toxics into the Danube River. The project builds and expands upon “Building Environmental Citizenship to Support Transboundary Pollution Reduction in the Danube: A Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia” (Pilot Project), a GEF Medium Sized Project that is being executed by the proposers of this PDF - B request.

The Danube Strategic Action Plan (SAP), developed under the auspices of UNDP/GEF, provides for a concerted region-wide attack on the deterioration of water quality in the Danube River. Increased human activity and polluted effluents discharged into the Danube have produced high loads of nutrients and toxins that, in turn, contribute to eutrophication in the Danube and the Black Sea. The sources of these high levels of nutrients and toxins include chemical fertilizers and manure from intensive large-scale livestock and other agricultural operations, municipal wastes, and discharges from various industrial sources. Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina discharge significant amounts of these pollutants, which contribute to transboundary pollution of the Danube and ultimately, the Black Sea.

Enhancing public access to environmental information and public participation in environmental decisionmaking in the Danube countries will play an important role in reducing pollution discharges to the Danube River Basin and achieving the objectives of the Danube Convention. The key role of citizen involvement in building successful pollution efforts has been documented in many countries and contexts around the globe and is recognized in the Danube SAP. The governments participating in the Danube SAP have committed themselves to meaningful citizen participation in carrying out the environmental and pollution reduction goals of the Danube Action Plan (see e.g., Part II, Chapter 4, Paragraph 61). Other provisions of the Danube SAP illustrate a strong awareness of the connection between the participation of a wide variety of actors and SAP success. The SAP identifies a variety of tools to achieve the goals of ecological restoration, including promotion of public involvement. The project will be designed and implemented in a manner that advances the goals of reducing toxics and nutrient discharges to the Danube River Basin and contributes to the transparency of the SAP implementation as a whole by developing mechanisms for public involvement in environmental decisionmaking and enhancing the commitment of political and civil society to the goals of pollution reduction in the River Basin.

The project will assist the nine Danube countries listed above in the development of legal, regulatory, institutional and practical measures to provide meaningful public access to environmental information and increase and sustain long-term public involvement in efforts to reduce toxic and nutrient pollutant discharges to the Danube with transboundary implications. All of these countries face significant challenges as they seek to develop the legal, institutional and practical infrastructures needed for effective public access to environmental information and public participation in environmental decision making. The Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia has demonstrated the importance of carefully assessing the circumstances that are specific to each country in the broader effort to increase public support for reductions of transboundary pollutants. A guiding principle of the project, therefore, will be to identify and assist in the development of implementation strategies that are realistic, sustainable, and likely to achieve practical results in the particular circumstances of each of the participating countries.

Based on experience gained during conduct of the Pilot Project, the Full Project is expected to result in the following outputs (including, where relevant, the following activities to achieve them):

· A needs assessment identifying, for each participating country, the priority problems and opportunities and the most promising legal, institutional and other measures for addressing those problems and opportunities in order to enhance public access to environmental information and participation in environmental decision making relating to discharges to the Danube.

· Development in each participating country of specific measures for enhancing public involvement as well as strategies for effectively implementing them in the context of Danube restoration efforts and sustaining public involvement over the long-term. A range of potential measures, detailed in Paragraph 15 below, will be elaborated and evaluated for suitability to each country’s specific circumstances.

· Where appropriate, field testing of specific, replicable public involvement measures to address actual point and non-point discharges of pollutants to the Danube in the nine countries through case studies or other methods that will concretely demonstrate how public involvement measures can further the goals of the SAP.

· Adaptation and application to the nine Danube Basin countries of lessons learned in Hungary and Slovenia through the Pilot Project for promoting public involvement in support of efforts to reduce transboundary pollution of the Danube and sharing of knowledge among Pilot Project participants and participants in the Full Project.

· Strengthened capacity of government ministries and NGOs throughout the Danube Basin to implement (or assist in implementation of) public access to environmental information and public participation regimes, through training workshops, field studies, technical assistance, and development of handbooks, manuals, and other means.

· Strengthened inter-governmental and government-to-NGO cooperation and partnerships to enable joint learning on viable approaches to public participation in the context of control and prevention of point and non-point discharges to the Danube with transboundary implications.

· A final report detailing the results of the project and recommending further steps that are needed to assure full implementation throughout the Danube basin of public access to environmental information and public participation in support of Danube pollution reduction efforts.

Activities designed to achieve these outputs will include: preparation of a needs assessment for each participating country; in-region capacity building workshops; on-going technical assistance; preparation of resource and reference material including those identifying “best practices” to promote public involvement; study tours in countries of the E.U., the pilot countries, and the U.S.; and in-region meetings of all participants to ensure knowledge sharing and coordination among all participating countries and pilot countries. In addition, specific activities will be tailored to the needs of each participating country, in accordance with the information and evaluation developed through the PDF - B.

12. Global Significance

Nutrient over-enrichment and toxic pollutants, including persistent organic pollutants (POPs), are becoming more widespread water pollution problems around the globe. Pollution from the countries of the Danube River Basin have contributed to the transboundary water quality problem in the Danube and the Black Sea.

Public access to information and public participation measures developed through the project will enable the nine Danube Basin countries to move towards achievement of the important global environmental goals of the Danube SAP, the Aarhus Convention, the Danube River Protection Convention, the Proposed GEF Partnership On Nutrient Reduction for the Danube/Black Sea Basin, and the Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Additionally, it is anticipated that these measures and other results of the project will be shared with countries facing similar challenges in river basins in other regions of the world.

13. Background

The Danube SAP identifies a variety of tools to achieve the goal of ecological restoration and conservation, including promotion of public participation and awareness raising through interest group participation and changes in consumer behavior. The SAP recognizes that a large number of non-governmental actors must be mobilized in order to reach the goals set out in the Plan. To this end, the GEF has supported the Danube Environmental Forum (DEF) and other regional activities to assure the participation of NGOs in planning and implementation activities.

The 18 - month Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia was designed to advance these important objectives, using the Aarhus Convention as a guide to achieving effective citizen involvement. It is developing practical, replicable mechanisms for institutionalizing and operationalizing environmental public access to information and participation in support of the goals of the SAP and Danube Pollution Reduction Programme, as well as of parallel efforts to protect the Black Sea.

The Pilot Project began with country-specific needs assessment in each country, and in-region consultations with government officials, NGOs and other stakeholders of each pilot country to identify priority problems and their solutions with respect to public involvement in environmental decisionmaking relating to reduction of transboundary discharges of pollutants to the Danube. Through these initial activities, the participating countries and NGOs identified the need to overcome significant obstacles in Hungary and Slovenia to implementing public access to water-related environmental information as fundamental to improving public involvement in Danube protection. The major obstacles include gaps in governmental capacity to respond to citizen requests for information and in NGOs’ and citizens’ ability to effectively request and obtain relevant information.

As a result, the Pilot Project is focusing its efforts on building capacity in water and environment ministries to provide public access to water-related environmental information and developing measures for assuring that relevant water-related information is made available to the public in a timely and useable fashion. These measures in Hungary include specific guidelines for government officials on how to provide public access to water-related environmental information and guidance for citizens on how to obtain such information. Measures in Slovenia include draft amendments to the Environmental Protection Act and guidance for government officials on practical and institutional issues involved in providing public access to water related environmental information. Pilot Project activities for capacity building and development of measures to improve public access to environmental information have included: the preparation of a “good practices” manual and other written materials identifying effective strategies for cost-effectively providing public access to environmental information, three in-region capacity building seminars and workshops addressing specific obstacles to public access to information, ongoing technical assistance, intensive study tour training in the E.U. and U.S., and plenary in-region meetings to promote shared learning. The project’s final report will identify the lessons learned from the Pilot Project and their applicability to other CEE countries in the Danube basin and will make recommendations for further work that needs to be undertaken in order to facilitate public involvement in efforts to restore the Danube and prevent transboundary pollution. The Pilot Project is developing constituencies within each country’s government to foster sustainability of the project’s goals.

The Full Project will build on the experience in the Pilot Project in order to increase public involvement in and support for reductions of transboundary nutrient and toxic discharges to the Danube in countries throughout the Danube basin. Thus, the Full Project will identify the main obstacles to increased public involvement in Danube protection efforts, evaluate a broad range of potential measures for addressing these obstacles, beginning with those tested in the Pilot Project, and will adapt and expand upon successful activities undertaken in the Pilot Project to achieve results in the remaining nine Danube Basin countries consistent with their particular needs. Outputs of the Pilot Project will serve as key resources and potential models in the Full Project.

The countries engaged in the current project (Hungary and Slovenia) share a number of characteristics with the countries for the expanded project. Like the pilot countries, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina all have a strong stake in the environmental health of the Danube. These countries have also made commitments to promote public awareness and public participation in sustaining sound water policies. A number of them aspire to membership in the European Union, which will also require demonstrated commitments to public access to environmental information and to water body protection. All of these countries are engaged in the transition from socialist to market economies and therefore face the difficult challenges of building democracies and civil society and developing effective government institutions to carry out their international and domestic commitments. Thus, they need assistance in developing the capacity to make public access to environmental decisionmaking and public participation an on-the-ground reality.

Stakeholders

The project will be designed to engage the relevant stakeholders in the Danube River Basin countries.

· Government: Officials in environment, water and other ministries who are responsible for water-related environmental information and public involvement in decision making at national, regional and local levels, as well as representatives from inter-governmental bodies, such as the Danube Secretariat, which is an important source of environmental information on the Danube.

· NGOs: Representatives of non-governmental organizations with a strong stake in the environmental health of the Danube. These groups include the Danube Environmental Forum and other transnational and national organizations, as well as citizens groups organized to address local planning issues.

· Private Sector: Representatives from industry and agriculture that are impacting water quality in the Danube and its tributaries and contributing to transboundary water pollution.

· Other: Journalists, academicians and other opinion leaders or policy experts with a role in disseminating information and influencing decisions on water quality.

Information on Project Leaders

The proposed project will be executed by the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (the REC) in Szentendre, Hungary, in partnership with Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington, D.C. and the Center for Environmental and Land Use Law at NYU School of Law (NYU) in New York City. The three partners are successfully collaborating to conduct the Pilot Project.

The proposed project will be an integral part of on-going REC efforts, beginning in 1990, to support development and implementation of access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice requirements in Central Europe. The REC is well positioned to conduct the project activities in the region. It has offices in Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia - Herzegovina, and has strong relationships and extensive contacts with government officials, NGOs and other stakeholders in all the Danube Basin countries. Additionally, the REC has been involved in developing and then assisting to implement the Aarhus Convention in the CEE countries, and has been actively involved in assisting its member countries who aspire to accession to the EU. The REC has been supporting the Danube SAP through small grants for NGOs in the past years. REC’s partners, NYU and RFF, each have a decade of experience working with the REC and the countries of Central/Eastern Europe on these issues, and also bring the perspectives of government, the NGO community and the business community, as well as the perspectives of law and policy, to the implementation of open government provisions.

14. Project Description

In order to increase opportunities in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina for public involvement in support of pollution reduction, and ultimately the goals of the Danube SAP, Danube Pollution Reduction Programme, and the Danube Convention, the Full Project will conduct a three-year capacity building and technical assistance program for key government officials, NGOs and other stakeholders, including industry representatives, journalists and academicians. The Full Project will be informed by and build upon the results of the Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia, particularly the recommendations for work in other CEE Danube countries provided in the final report of the Pilot Project and other project outputs. Experience with the Pilot Project has demonstrated that development of a functioning public involvement regime requires building capacity within government and the NGO community and establishing the underlying legal, institutional, and practical infrastructure for provision of public access to environmental information and public participation. The project will build needed capacity and help establish this critical infrastructure through workshops, technical assistance activities and one or more study tours in an EU country, the United States, and one or both of the Pilot Project countries (Hungary and/or Slovenia) using the outputs of the Pilot Project as resources and potential models, and adapting or expanding upon the Pilot Project methodology.

Through these project activities, as well as case studies focused on Danube “hot spot” areas where appropriate, the Full Project will work with the participants to identify and develop effective measures to promote public involvement in support of reducing transboundary pollution in the Danube that are adapted to the particular circumstances and needs of the participating countries. Potential measures (and activities to develop them) that will be preliminarily evaluated for the nine Danube countries during the PDF - B period (and refined through the needs assessment and other activities early in the Full Project) include (but are not limited to):

· legislation, policies, guidelines and administrative rules on public access to environmental information and/or public participation in environmental decisionmaking relating to water bodies;

· institutional arrangements to facilitate public access to environmental information and public participation in environmental decisionmaking relating to water bodies;

· improvement or institution of basic systems that are predicates for a working public access to information regime, including systems for government record keeping, classification, storage and controlling access to confidential information, and tracking and responding to citizen requests relating to water bodies, through administrative measures, training, technical assistance and other activities;

· improvement of the provision by governmental authorities of “active information” to the public relating to Danube pollution, through such means as the development of publicly accessible databases for environmental information on discharges to the Danube, establishment of public dockets and record rooms containing such information, and other public outreach activities;

· awareness-raising to support Danube pollution reduction through capacity building activities and development of handbooks, manuals and other resource materials for NGOs, the press, and other stakeholders on accessing publicly available environmental information relating to water bodies, and other methods;

· constituency-building and development of NGO, government, and other stakeholder expertise and practical experience in accessing environmental information and participating in environmental decisionmaking to support Danube pollution reduction efforts, through methods such as the use of case studies and/or other methods to impart concrete experience to government officials, NGOs, industrial/agricultural dischargers and other stakeholders to address “hot spots” impacting the Danube or its tributaries.

The REC, RFF and NYU will work with in-region teams to ensure that each element of the project is consistent with the circumstances in and goals of the countries and will meet the needs of the participants. Based on the experience from the Pilot Project, the participants could include government officials and NGO representatives (including independent/NGO legal experts) from each country, as well as representatives from industry, agriculture, the press, and academia. Participants from government could include personnel from water, environment, agriculture and other ministries and/or legislators. Information gathered during the PDF - B phase will help determine which participants would best contribute to the success of the project. Representatives from Hungary and Slovenia who participated in the Pilot Project will be integrated into the Full Project in order to ensure continuity and transfer of knowledge.

Specifically, the Full Project anticipates developing the following activities:

· Initially, a needs assessment phase will be conducted. This effort will identify legal, institutional, programmatic, and practical barriers to as well as opportunities for public access to information and public participation that will support the transboundary pollution reduction goals of the SAP. REC, RFF and NYU will work with government officials and other stakeholders to target priority issues in each country. The needs assessment is likely to identify one or more case studies in each of the countries involving sources of transboundary nutrients and/or toxic substances discharged to the Danube as the focus of the training and technical assistance activities of the project. These case studies will focus on “hot spots” identified through the Danube GEF Program and thus will provide a concrete set of circumstances in response to which public involvement measures will be developed and “field tested.”

· Capacity building activities for government officials and NGOs, including, where appropriate, in-region workshops and training sessions conducted in local language for officials of ministries and local authorities and NGO leaders in each of the countries over the three-year period. The training will improve skills and help develop specific legal and institutional mechanisms for establishing and maintaining access to environmental information to enable effective public participation. Where case studies are developed in the needs assessment phase, the workshops will bring into focus specific and concrete opportunities for public access to information and public participation that can reduce discharges with transboundary impacts.

· Ongoing technical assistance will be provided to officials with environmental responsibilities to strengthen the institutional and legal framework for environmental public involvement in each country. Technical assistance will be conducted both in person and through electronic communications, as in the Pilot Project. Technical assistance activities will be directly linked to the other project activities and coordinated with them. Project leaders, consultants from the U.S., E.U. and participants from the Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia will provide technical assistance throughout the project. Levels and types of technical assistance will vary according to each country’s circumstances as determined in the PDF - B planning stage of the project. The project leaders will work with the country partners and NGOs to develop legislation, regulations, practices and/or policies as appropriate. This is an iterative collaborative process that will include interdisciplinary research, identification of best practices, and generation or supplementation of written materials, and other joint work involving REC, NYU, RFF and other international experts.

· Study tours will be conducted in the end of the first year or early in the second year of the project. The tours will enable participants from each country to consult directly with public participation and environmental information specialists and water pollution control experts in the United States, the European Union, Pilot Project and other CEE countries, and intergovernmental bodies such as the Rhine Commission, where appropriate, to bring this experience into the process of drafting and/or recommending legislative/ regulatory, policy and institutional measures in their countries, as well as to obtain practical knowledge and advice from these counterparts.

· Where appropriate, additional activities could include a focus on the “hotspots” investigated through the case studies as models for practice, engaging all stakeholders in the process of public access to information and participation in decisionmaking around solutions to these problems. Depending on the circumstances, this could involve the deployment of a number of measures, including:

· dialogue among government representatives and other stakeholders;

· technical assistance in obtaining, managing, and disseminating the relevant information;

· strengthening of institutional mechanisms for the “active” provision of information;

· developing written materials for practical application of public participation mechanisms that address hotspot issues.

Sustainability

The project will be designed and implemented in close partnership with key government officials and ministries, and leading environmental NGOs in the Danube River Basin countries. Inclusive efforts will be complemented by substantial outreach to other NGOs and other stakeholders. REC’s strong working relationships and collaborative programs with environmental officials throughout the CEE region, and its region-wide local offices and contacts with NGOs will also help to ensure that the progress achieved through the project will be sustained over the long-term.

An important challenge to developing approaches to public involvement in transboundary water issues is that political and economic conditions, as well as specific water issues, vary widely among the Danube Basin countries. Therefore, a central focus of the project development phase (PDF–B) will be to determine the particular needs and potential challenges in each country. The Full Project will be carefully tailored in order to assure that the mechanisms applied are appropriate to each country and will result in an ongoing commitment to the project goals.

15. Description of Proposed PDF - B Activities

PDF - B support is requested for an eight-month preparatory phase culminating in the elaboration of a Full Project brief. PDF - B activities will allow the project leaders to gather information in the region, consult with government officials and NGOs, and cooperate with UNDP to develop a final Full Project. Because the Danube River Basin countries are at varying stages of development and have diverse problems, the project leaders anticipate a careful diagnostic process in which the needs and capacities of each country will be assessed and evaluated. By the end of the PDF - B, it is anticipated that a final configuration of countries and well-defined activities and outputs for each will be elaborated in a Project Brief for the Full Project.

The overall objective of developing measures to increase public involvement in efforts to reduce discharges of pollutants to the Danube with transboundary implications will be the same for all countries participating in the Full Project. However, because each of the Danube Basin countries faces significantly different circumstances, a key strategy of the PDF - B for development of the Full Project will be to identify each country’s specific needs and priorities, and to make a preliminary determination of the specific objectives, methodology, activities and outputs of the full project with respect to each of the participating countries, in light of their specific circumstances. The PDF - B period will be critical for determining the methodological approaches, measures, activities and outputs that are most likely to prove successful in each of the Danube countries that will participate in the Full Project and to determine the timing of relevant activities and outputs. These preliminary determinations will be made during the PDF - B in consultation with government officials, NGOs and other stakeholders of each participating country, and will be refined during the early stages of the Full Project. The work done during the PDF - B to prepare the Full Project in a manner that is appropriate for and tailored to the needs and circumstances of each of the nine participating countries will be informed by the project leaders’ experience working on public involvement issues in the nine participating countries and by the results of the Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia.

The PDF - B phase of the project will generate vital information on the institutional frameworks, legal and regulatory systems, and the specific needs and problems of each country with respect to public access to environmental information and public involvement with respect to pollution reduction in the Danube. The PDF - B will enable the project leaders to identify and establish collaborative relationships with key government officials, NGO participants, and other stakeholders who should be involved in the final project. In addition, during the PDF - B, the project leaders will address the role of case studies and how best to “field test” measures developed through the project.

The PDF - B period will also include an evaluation of whether special circumstances in some of the countries warrant phasing in project activities more slowly than in other countries. Depending on what is learned through the PDF–B period, implementation of activities may be intensive in each country at different points in the project. Some countries may need to be brought in slowly, perhaps initially participating through observing the process in the more advanced countries.

In early October, 2001, prior to the PDF - B period, REC, NYU and RFF will hold a preliminary scoping meeting at the REC office in Szentendre, Hungary immediately following the final in-region meeting of the Pilot Project. Representatives from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina will engage in initial consultations with REC, RFF and NYU and participants from the Pilot Project. The participation of these nine countries at this preliminary meeting is not part of the PDF – B request and is being funded separately.

PDF - B support is sought for the following subsequent activities:

· In-Country Consultations with Stakeholders

Project leaders will travel to Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Moldova and Ukraine for in depth information-gathering and consultations with government officials, NGOs and other stakeholders. These visits will provide information on the specific circumstances of each these countries that is required to design the Full Project. Issues that will be addressed with respect to each of these countries during the in-country consultations with stakeholders will include:

o legislative, regulatory and practical barriers and opportunities for public access to environmental information and public participation in environmental decisionmaking;

o the status of environmental information systems, public participation, and potential priority challenges and needs to improve public involvement;

o the potential roles of public access to environmental information and public participation in addressing transboundary discharges of pollutants to the Danube and identified “hot spots”;

o identification of all relevant stakeholders to be included in the Full Project and discussion of their priority needs;

o potential activities and outputs of the project, and their timing, as well as general issues of project methodology.

Because the project leaders already have substantial information on these issues with respect to

Czech Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia, in-country consultations will not be needed in

these three countries; supplementary information necessary to design the project in these

countries will be gathered via email and telephone, and at the two regional plenary meetings

described below.

· In-Region Plenary Meetings

There will be two in-region plenary meetings held at the REC facility in Szentendre, Hungary.

In each of these meetings, participants from all nine of the countries will meet together with the project leaders and with representative participants from the Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia. At least one government representative and one NGO representative from each of the participating countries will attend these two, three-day sessions.

The first plenary meeting will focus on developing the central features (e.g., activities, outputs, timeframes, etc.) of the Full Project in collaboration with the participating countries and enabling participants to share their experience and knowledge with each other and representatives of the Pilot Project countries. In turn, feedback from the Pilot Project will be incorporated into revised project planning for the full project. This meeting will also address such questions as possible phasing of country participation in activities of the Full Project, mechanisms for inter-country coordination throughout the project, and other issues of common interest to the participants or requiring input from all participants jointly.

The second meeting will serve as a follow-up in-region workshop to enable the participating countries to review, provide feedback and suggest revisions to the draft project brief for the Full Project. The draft Full Project brief will be used as a basis for further consultations with the individual countries to assure that it accurately reflects country priorities and needs, and that the project design is commensurate with the countries’ capacity for implementation. Feedback on the draft Full Project brief from country officials and stakeholders will be incorporated into the Full Project brief. The meeting will also enable the project leaders to gather any remaining information necessary to complete the project brief.

· Design of and Agreement on the Contours of the Full Project, Including Analysis of Incremental Costs

Throughout the course of the PDF – B, the project leaders will engage in analysis and drafting leading to a completed Full Project brief. This ongoing process will be organized through several activities.

First, the PDF – B will begin with a kick-off and planning meeting of the project leaders and UNDP to finalize the PDF - B design, plan in-region activities, and outline the Full Project brief.

Second, the project leaders will use the information gleaned from the first regional plenary meeting and country-by-country consultations with stakeholders to conduct a preliminary analysis of the issues addressed in the in-country consultations and in-region plenary meetings, including the following with respect to each country participating in the PDF - B:

· Adequacy of current legal, institutional and practical framework for public access to environmental information,

· Key legal, institutional and practical barriers to public access to environmental information and potential mechanisms for addressing them,

· Identification of public involvement measures that could support efforts to reduce transboundary discharges of pollutants to the Danube, including identified “hot spots”,

· Assessment of priority issues and needs for assistance,

· Identification of key activities of the Full Project, including timetables and, if appropriate phasing, to address priority issues and needs,

· Identification of key outputs of the Full Project.

Information relevant to the incremental cost assessment gathered through in-country

consultations and other communications with participating governments will be used to generate

the incremental cost assessment to be included in the project brief.

The process described above will result in development of a draft Full Project brief to be shared with country participants for review at the second regional plenary meeting. Finally, after the second regional plenary meeting, the project leaders will again meet in collaboration with UNDP to finalize the project brief, incorporating feedback from the participants garnered at the second regional meeting and further analysis of the issues above.

17. Eligibility

All the proposed countries are eligible to receive GEF financing. The project is eligible under GEF Focal Area “International Waters,” specifically under Operational Program 8.

Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia and Bosnia - Herzegovina are all committed to the Danube SAP. Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine are all signatories of the Danube River Protection Convention, and all except Ukraine have ratified. Czech Republic, Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Moldova are signatories to the Aarhus convention, and Ukraine, Romania and Moldova have already ratified it. Yugoslavia has declared its intention to accede to the Aarhus Convention, and Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania are committed to EU accession.

The proposed project is complementary for purposes of incremental cost assessment. The project complements and builds on (but does not duplicate) baseline activities to promote public involvement in environment protection that are being conducted throughout the CEE region. Without additional GEF funding, the activities proposed by the project are unlikely to be conducted. The funding requested from the GEF is additional, because no bilateral funding has been provided for the proposed project activities. The GEF currently is funding the Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia, which will wind up in October 2001; no other similar activities are included in the GEF Danube program.

18. National Level Support

Letters of support are currently pending.

19. Justification

The PDF - B grant is essential to developing an effective Full Project that will build upon the success of the Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia to increase public involvement in efforts to reduce transboundary pollution throughout the Danube basin. Although co-financing of project preparation is being provided by the participating countries, REC and its partners, and an outside funder, a Full Project cannot be prepared without PDF - B assistance from GEF.

The Pilot Project in Hungary and Slovenia has demonstrated the importance of assessing the circumstances that are specific to each country in the broader effort to address transboundary water problems. The preparation phase supported by PDF - B funding will facilitate the full investigation of the relevant circumstances in each country, as well as allow for coordinated planning within the region. The planning phase will enable REC, RFF and NYU in collaboration with local officials and NGOs to identify and address potential logistical and cultural challenges to implementation of public access to information and participation in environmental decisionmaking. By laying significant groundwork in the PDF - B phase of the project, the Full Project can be appropriately structured to meet the needs and reflect the realities of the participating countries.

In addition, mechanisms for coordination developed during the planning phase will facilitate efficient implementation of the Full Project and maximize ongoing collaborative activities to address water pollution among the Danube River countries. The PDF - B project planning process will also be helpful in raising public awareness, strengthening official and public support for the goals of the Danube SAP, Danube Convention and the Aarhus Convention, and assuring inclusion of all relevant stakeholders in the Full Project.

20. Timetable

Month 1 Planning Meeting of Project Leaders and UNDP in New York

Month 2 – 3 In-Country Consultations : Mission #1 to Slovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia; Mission #2 to Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria

Month 4 First in-Region Plenary Meeting

Month 5 Preparation of Draft Full Project Brief

Month 6 Second in-Region Plenary Meeting to review Draft Project Brief and complete information gathering

Months 7 - 8 Meeting of Project Leaders and UNDP in New York to revise draft of GEF Full Project Brief and completion of Full Project Brief

BUDGET FOR PDF – B

ACTIVITIES	GEF	Countries in-kind	NGOs in-kind	NYU	RFF	REC	Other (Foundation)	Totals
In-Country Consultations with Stakeholders	$62,405	$24,000	$6,000	$2,000	$2,000	$12,000	$10,000	$118,405
Regional Plenary Meetings	67,459	18,000	4,500	2,000	2,000	8,000	10,000	111,959
Design and Agreement of Full Project, Including Incremental Cost Analysis	72,509			35,000	35,000	13,000		155,509
Full Project Brief	22,627			6,000	6,000	2,000		36,627
TOTAL	$225,000	$42,000	$10,500	$45,000	$45,000	$35,000	$20,000	$422,500

PROJECT STRUCTURE

Stakeholders

Information on Project Leaders

BUDGET FOR PDF – B

GEF

NGOs in-kind

NYU

RFF

REC

Totals