Environment Management & Law Association, Hungary

Total Budget:                     48 000 euros

Total request from Fund:  37 500 euros

The Access Initiative is a global coalition of public interest groups monitoring good governance specifically regarding environment. The Access Initiative-Europe is a part of this global network. Armed with databases and analyses of national “good governance” progress and gaps, the TAI national coalitions have recently turned their attention from assessment to successfully engaging their governments and implementing strategies for public awareness-raising towards influencing policy reform. Click here to read more about The Access Initiative

 With this project, members of the TAI network in 5 countries within the EU-10, viz, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland will collaborate to share their experience and knowledge while learning about improving “access” directly from their partners from the Global South. In this way, the participating organizations will be in better positions to inform their countries’ development aid agencies, ministries of foreign affairs, their public as well as EU institutions about Global South realities and needs. This information will travel further to governments outside the five countries through the Partnership for Principle 10 (PP10, www.pp10.org), which is a forum where governments, international organizations, and civil society groups work together to implement practical solutions to promote access to information, participation, and justice for environmentally sustainable decisions.

Specifically, the project will seek to achieve the following:
•    Build capacity of existing TAI national coalitions and improve the understanding of NGOs within the EU-10 of the access needs in the global south
•    Create awareness among all stakeholders including development aid institutions at the national, regional and EU levels, NGOs and the public that environmental governance are key elements of development.
•    Help build a EU-10 coalition that will. promote environmental governance in the Global South through influencing development aid distribution
•    Engage development aid officials, NGOs and media, in a dialogue on strategies and actions to support good governance in the Global South.
•    Build skills of 5 EU-10 NGOs for lobbying relevant national and EU institutions towards promoting environmental governance in the Global South

The proposed project will engage the coalition of 5 EU-10 NGDOs to use the existing TAI network to gain experience in direct collaboration with partners from the Global South through activities including Roundtables organized in each of the five participating EU-10 countries. A conference will include the participation of representatives from NGDOs from the Global South. As a result advocacy campaigns, and agenda for action will be designed.