Montenegro

Joint environmental projects and plans of the Ministry of Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection and UNDP in Montenegro

Podgorica, 29 September 2009

mplementation of around thirty joint environmental projects and plans will continue and expand, it was agreed in a coordination meeting between representatives of the Ministry of Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection and UNDP Montenegro where previous progress and future joint plans were analyzed.

Key component of this joint cluster of projects is establishing a correlation between environmental protection, climate change and economic development in Montenegro.

It was agreed at the meeting that UNDP would be entrusted with donor assistance coordination related to the environmental protection.  

“I think it is very important that we agreed to entrust UNDP with donor assistance in the environmental domain. I am very pleased with the cooperation of our specialized services with UNDP, and I believe they will successfully realize all of the thirty existing joint projects and initiate new projects in the best interest of the citizens of Montenegro and their life quality,” said H. E. Mr. Branimir Gvozdenović, Minister of Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection. “With UNDP’s support, we will have advisors with international experience. Together with us they will analyze current legal solutions and the work on improvements. One of important elements of our cooperation will be future capacity building, not only of the respective ministry but also of the local self-governance, in order to enable implementation of complex joint projects that are ahead of us,” Minister Gvozdenović emphasized.

“We also agreed to initiate new interesting projects, such as the one related to Durmitor that is  just now being developed. We talked about other protected areas as well, and we think it is very important to establish monitoring for protected area systems and to fully legally define their protection. Among new ideas is also creation of a special database of young Montenegrin experts that are studying abroad and are involved in projects of different institutions around the world, that could support us in project development. We also agreed to establish an eco-library” Minister Gvozdenović concluded.

Mr. Alexander Avanessov, UNDP Resident Representative/ UN Resident Coordinator said: “Beside thirty joint projects that we already have with the Ministry for Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection, we believe that we might have more in the future. We specifically discussed our support in the domain of spatial planning, environmental protection and climate change. We also talked a series of events and projects where Montenegro plays a regional role in the Western Balkans and South-East Europe region. In terms of regional cooperation, special attention was given to the Western Balkans Regional Environmental Programme for the Remediation of Hot Spots.”

Mr. Avanessov further explained that UNDP supported the Ministry of Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection in constituting and further developing of the Forum on Climate Change, and he also emphasized that UNDP is assisting the Government in preparation of the Initial National Communication to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

 
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Joint projects and plans of the Ministry of Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection and UNDP in Montenegro:

Spatial planning

Apart from the financial and technical support for development of spatial plans for eleven municipalities in the northern Montenegro and the municipality of Cetinje, UNDP will provide expertise and financial support to the Ministry for drafting of the Spatial plan of special purpose for the Durmitor area.

Also, the Ministry and UNDP will continue their cooperation towards improvement of the relevant legislation in the area of urban planning. Relevant bylaws will be drafted with the aim of alleviating business barriers and harmonization with the standards of EU.

UNDP and the Ministry will continue to work on improving capacities in the sector of urban planning on both national and local level. A study, which will elaborate human capacities in the sector of urban planning, will be done very soon. Based on this study, a customized capacity building programme will be developed to improve expertise in this field.

The stated activities which Ministry and UNDP are implementing in the field of urban planning are a part of the “Spatial planning support project in Montenegro” which is financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Environmental Protection

Apart from the projects in the domain of renewable energy resources, climate change and protected area systems that UNDP is implementing in partnership with the Ministry, there is a number of new pipeline projects, such as the Protected Area Finance Project and the development of “Global Environmental Fund Strategy (GEF) 5 for Montenegro”. The follow up to the “National Capacity Self Assessment (NCSA) – a set of environmental indicators” is also expected. Furthermore, it will be worked more intensively on the donor coordination related to the protected area systems. 

 

 

Regional Environmental Protection Programmes

Montenegro is hosting a 15 million regional environmental hot spots programme covering 6 countries/territories that has been implemented/coordinated by UNDP Montenegro successfully since November 2007. In Montenegro it worked on Mojkovac and the progress is evident. To promote the results of the regional programme Montenegro will host a regional conference on November 19th devoted to challenges and priorities in relation to dealing with “brownfields”, remediation of environment environmental hot spots.

Based on the positive experience with the above regional programme the Ministry and UNDP developed three new regional programmes on climate change, ecosystem services valuation and remediation of environmental hot spots and are working together on promoting Montenegro as the center for implementation/coordination of regional (Western Balkans) initiatives, projects. The upcoming regional conference on climate change at which UNDP will be represented and hosting of the Regional Climate Change FORUM constitution of which UNDP has supported are two other examples of Montenegro’s assuming leadership on sustainable development/environment issues/initiatives in the region.