Montenegro

Environmental GIS for Montenegro: A successfully completed capacity building training

The GIS capacity development training provided for the employees from the environmental protection and the forestry sectors will enable trainees to prevent non-sustainable use of forestry resources, and to use the gained knowledge and skills to increase and manage revenue from these resources and direct it to local development. It also provided the trainees with experience in creating and using digital maps, inventory planning, validation and visualisation, storage and usage of existing data, and detecting changes through time.

At the certificate giving ceremony Mr. Alexander Avanesov, UNDP Resident Representative and UN Resident Coordinator to Montenegro said: “The importance of this project is not only related to the implementation of the National Strategy of Sustainable Development and various policies and strategies, but also to the ongoing processes related to the accession to European Union. Reporting to various international institutions and adhering to commitments from international treaties can be done in an easier way, with more precision and less effort. Of course this will not happen overnight, but we already made these significant first steps. Also, we would like this system to be used as an instrument for the future development of tourism, and I here refer to tourism as a driving force for the entire economy. We are preparing to assist the tourism sector to better use environmental information in order to develop ecotourism and contribute to reducing poverty in the North of Montenegro.“ Mr. Avanesov also said that GIS system is of an extreme importance for the spatial planning sector, too. „We are working on creating possibilities to cooperate with the Ministry for Economic Development. This primarily refers to promoting new investments and Montenegro’s overall economic development,“ Mr. Avanesov announced.

H. E. Mr. Predrag Nenezić, Minister of Tourism and Environmental Protection expressed special gratitude to the Governments of Finland and Japan for financial support that enabled successful realisation of the EnvGIS Project, in cooperation with UNDP as agency in charge of implementation and the Government of Montenegro which together backed up the project with total of 1.1 mln USD. He further said that GIS was particularly important for implementing the biodiversity strategy as a document that offers a national response with respect to the obligations stipulated in the UN Convention on Biodiversity. „This system continues to demonstrate exceptional relevance in setting up of the Natura 2000 network of ’protected localities’ as a priority activity in the EU accession process,“ Minister Nenezić emphasized.

 

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management H. E. Mr. Milutin Simović stressed special importance of the fact that the staff that received the training were evenly located throughout Montenegro. „In this way those certificates are now in Podgorica and Rožaje, as well as in Plav and Nikšić, and I find it quite important that GIS technology reach out to the relevant points where  forest resources are. That is why we can say now that we have a new tool in our hands which will truly enable us to conduct a better quality management over Montenegrin forests as a natural resource,“ Minister Simović concluded.

 

 

Mr. Robert Aleksić, Manager of EnvGIS Project for Montenegro expressed hope that some way would be found to include education on the Geographic Information System in the educational curriculum in order for the entire country to get ownership of what the GIS project is currently doing. „Our plans for the environmental protection and the forestry sectors in the following period refer to assisting in the national forest inventory and activities within the action plan for reduction of illegal cutting. As for the tourism sector, in cooperation with the Mountaineering Association, the Biking Association and the National Tourism Organization we plan to create an electronic register of mountain paths by the end of this year,“ Mr Aleksić said.

„This is just an initial stage in the implementation of GIS,“ said Mr Nikola Čađenović from the Geological Institute in his statement to the media. „In respect of geological research, we plan to establish a comprehensive database to include private and state sectors. With the help of the database the Ministry for Economic Development could control both private and state firms dealing with geological research,“ emphasized Mr. Čađenović.

 

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UNDP Montenegro started introducing GIS in the forestry and environmental sectors in May 2005, with the financial support of the Governments of Finland, Japan and Montenegro and UNDP itself, amounting to 1.1 million USD.

Today, four years later,

• we made various maps of Montenegro - topographic, hydrographic, geologic, soil etc., become a common foundation for all of the data of Institutions from these sectors;
• we have the forestry sector in which over thirty people use these maps and contemporary information technology in their daily work, contributing to the improvement of management in the forestry sector;
• we are preparing to further support the implementation of the National Forestry Policy;
• we have people in almost all the institutions related to the environment, which started using the maps and GIS, and we expect similar positive trend to start happening in the environmental sector soon - people to start using maps to make decisions, to cross reference data from various sectors, presenting plans on these maps and using them to better monitor changes and impact of plans onto our environment;
• we are preparing to assist the tourism sector to better use the environmental information in order to develop ecotourism and contribute to reducing poverty in the North of Montenegro.

 

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Geographic Information System (GIS) is a group of technologies, processes, human resources and data from different domains (meteorology, forestry, water management, environmental protection, etc.), which can be compared, verified and jointly used for different researches in order to manage natural resources in a sustainable way.

Introduction of GIS in Montenegro aims to create conditions for better monitoring, management and protection of forests, biodiversity and land as most significant sustainable development resources in Montenegro. Ensuring environmental and forestry sustainability is one of the Millennium Development Goals, and it is unimaginable without complete and precise data on the forest conditions and the control processes in the planned forestry works. By establishing data framework required by various EU conventions, the GIS in the Montenegrin environmental sector will also contribute to the European Integration processes.

The implementation of EnvGIS Project for Montenegro have so far entailed procurement of equipment and software, set up of pilot GIS system encompassing forestry and biodiversity data and basic training of Central Management Unit of the Montenegrin Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management as well as trainings in biodiversity sector.

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The National Forestry Policy, adopted in February 2008, acknowledges the fact that Forestry sector in Montenegro is facing the challenge of improving the forest administration practice in order to implement the vision of forestry, to improve the current condition of all forests as to ensure the balance of protection, environmental, social and economic functions and to ensure sustainability. Having in mind that Montenegro belongs to the countries with the largest forest cover in Europe, it is not necessary to emphasize the importance of dealing with the challenges that the country is facing now. In addition, according to the forest areas value, level of conservation, regulation, diversity, management and impact on the environmental protection, forests in Montenegro belong among those of the best quality in Europe.