News

Regional mayors involved in Stara Planina discussion
August 21, 2007   A meeting concerning Euroregion Stara Planina took place in Pirot, Serbia on May 18, at which regional mayors decided to apply for membership of the Association of European Border Regions, which joins some 160 border regions across the continent. The...

REC establishes partnership with ICLEI
August 21, 2007   Gino van Begin, regional director for Europe of ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability, and Marta Szigeti Bonifert, executive director of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), signed a memorandum of understanding...

REC celebrates 10 years in Bosnia and Herzegovina
August 21, 2007   This spring marked the tenth anniversary of the REC's establishment in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). To celebrate the occasion, the REC's Country Office BiH organised an event in the Parliament and Council of Ministers building in Sarajevo on April...

Grants awarded for urban sustainability
August 21, 2007   Thirty-eight national and five regional grants worth more than EUR 525,000 were awarded to support civil society organisations working on urban sustainability. The national projects will be implemented in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former...

Change our behaviour, change the world
August 21, 2007 In trying to achieve sustainable development, 'sustainable' is the difficult bit. Development, willingly undertaken by stakeholders and often producing immediately tangible results, is an easier sell. But how is development to be carried out responsibly?...

REC supports Turkey's climate change challenges
August 21, 2007 Since Turkey's accession to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2004, the country has taken promising steps in joining the global effort to meet the challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change. In early 2007, the...

Arboretum project beautifies REC's head office premises
August 21, 2007   In 1995, Hungary's government granted as an in-kind contribution the right of use of property in Szentendre, Hungary to the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) for a period of 99 years. The property, now home to...

Workshop aims to improve environmental mediation in CEE
May 21, 2007   Cooperative decision making and conflict management in public planning and environment was the theme of a two-day workshop held in January 2007 in Budapest by the REC and Austria's OGUT. The workshop was part of a joint project to collect case studies...

GreenLight Programme shines on non-residential sector
May 21, 2007 Boosting the amount of efficient lighting in commercial and public buildings and outdoor spaces will play a major role in achieving European CO2 reduction goals. At the same time, more energy-efficient lighting can reduce dependence on energy imports,...

With Dutch support, Network for Horn of Africa launched
May 21, 2007 While climate change and energy security are two of Europe's headline issues, conditions are such in other parts of the world that food security is more of a primary concern. Nonetheless, the effects of climate change on already marginal environments are...

Albania publishes environmental law volume, debuts Green Pack
May 21, 2007   In March, REC Albania published its fourth volume of Albanian environmental legislation, which covers the period 2004-06. The 560-page volume contains approximately 60 legal acts, and testifies to Albanian efforts to bring the country's environmental...

Officials convene in Budapest for talks on green paper
May 21, 2007   More than 200 high-level government officials met in Budapest on March 6-7 to discuss and develop a European green paper on urban transport, which will likely be prepared by the end of September. The European Commission (EC) initiated the...

Green Pack a hit with MEPs
May 21, 2007   The REC's environment education toolkit, the Green Pack, was introduced in Brussels during a high-level presentation at the European Parliament on January 31. The event took place under the patronage of Stavros Dimas, European commissioner for...

Project address BiH water sector
May 21, 2007   Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is experiencing some serious water sector-related difficulties, due mostly to poorly developed capacities and infrastructure, but also to an assortment of socioeconomic and institutional shortcomings. A new REC project...

Second round of DRP grants extended to 62 NGOs
May 21, 2007   As part of the second round of DRP grants, 62 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) affiliated with the Danube River and its tributaries received USD 636,000 within the framework of the Danube Regional Project (DRP), with support from the United...

Putting Aarhus into action
May 21, 2007 In late 2004, the REC began a two-year project titled "Improving the Practices of Public Participation: Next Steps in Implementing the Aarhus Convention in South-Eastern Europe" to support implementation of the Convention and the Protocol on Pollutant...

Bulgarian NGO delivers Osam response
May 21, 2007 Concluding in December 2006, five demonstration projects were conducted at Danube "hot spots" — areas identified by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) as having exceptionally high levels of pollution. With very...

UNDP-GEF project encourages free flow of information
May 20, 2007 Citizens who want to know more about water pollution in their countries have a great deal of difficulty tracking down such information, as water-related data tends to be widely dispersed among many ministries and government offices at federal, entity,...

Happy together
November 26, 2008 The outcome of the Third Meeting of Parties to the Aarhus Convention, which took place in Riga, Latvia back in June, was cause for most participants to celebrate. NGO coalition European ECO Forum claimed in a press statement that it had successfully...

Five Balkan CSOs awarded regional SECTOR grants
November 26, 2008   In order to promote urban sustainability in South Eastern Europe (SEE), the REC, with financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), recently awarded EUR 174,000 in regional grants to five civil society...