The Final Conference “Collective action towards a green environment” was held today in Sarajevo within the project “NEST – Encouraging environmental protection through more effective participation of civil society in environmental management and prevention of criminal acts in the field of environmental protection”, which was financially supported by the Embassy of Sweden in Bosnia and Herzegovina through the Swedish Agency for International Development and Cooperation (Sida) and implemented the Resource Environmental Center.
The main goal of the project was to provide a new, innovative approach in supporting civil society organizations in the field of environmental protection, with the aim of strengthening the capacity of grassroots organizations that have the potential to take a leading role in key challenges related to the implementation and monitoring of environmental protection policies at all administrative levels and provide support and technical assistance to competent ministries in the process of harmonizing legislation with the EU acquis.
Representatives of relevant ministries at the state and entity levels, representatives of the non-governmental sector, judges and prosecutors, representatives of the academic community and educational institutions attended the Conference.
The participants-panelists discussed to which extent the project had an impact on environmental protection policy in BiH and the implementation of activities from the action plan of entity environmental protection strategies and Brčko District of BiH, as well as the progress in harmonizing BiH regulations with EU directives.
The project initiated processes related to strengthening the capacity of judges and prosecutors to handle criminal, administrative and civil proceedings in environmental protection cases, and the project also enabled cooperation with INTERPOL through the initiative for establishment of NEST (National Environmental Security Taskforce) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to INTERPOL, cooperation has been established with European networks of judges and prosecutors for future support to BiH institutions for environmental protection.
The goals we set within the project were ambitious, but sometimes ambition and the desire to progress make you more productive, so we believe that happened in our case.
During the conference, the needs for further reforms in the environmental protection sector, including strengthening the capacity of judicial institutions and further strengthening the capacity and networking of civil society organizations were emphasized.
