Focus Association for Sustainable Development, Slovenia

Total Budget:                    21 030 euros

Total request from Fund: 17 220 euros

 Climate change is the biggest single threat our planet is facing today and recent studies have demonstrated that this phenomenon is artificially created by humans. While the global south bears little historical responsibility for climate change, presently their contributions to this problem can not be undermined. However, in all debates on this issue, the global south maintains that  adopting measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions would hinder their economic growth. Therefore it is necessary to engage countries of the north and south in a dialogue on climate change. This dialogue should throw-up possibilities for economic growth with limited consequence for the climate system. As donor-countries, the members of the EU need to include climate change in debates over development, development strategies and development aid.

Slovenia now being a member of the EU, has now assumed its role as a ‘donor’ country ans is working on its own development policy to guide this role. Therefore, it is a crucial moment to include issues on climate change on the national development agenda. We wish to address this challenge through the project Safeguarding climate while developing? Yes, it’s possible!

The main objective of the project is to raise awareness and develop capacity of Slovene NGOs, politicians and wider public to integrate climate change objectives into Slovene and EU development debates.

This will be achieved by actions to achieve the following goals:  

1. To build up a resource on the relation between climate and development issues

2. To build capacity of development organisations in Slovenia including young people potentially working     in the development sector to understand the relation between climate and development objectives         and find solutions that achieve synergies for both

3. To lobby politicians to include climate in development assistance talks

4. To include climate issues in the development aid agenda of Slovenia

5. To engage in EU-level debates on climate change and development.

The actions that will be undertaken to achieve this will be:
1. Drafting of a background paper/analysis on how climate-development relation is perceived by the         people in developing countries and what solutions they can propose.

2. A public awareness campaign will be designed on the basis of the information generated above.

3. A capacity building workshop on the relation between climate and development objectives for those     engaged (and potentially wish to engage) in development cooperation resulting in identifying                 solutions to achieve synergies for both.

4. A Roundtable will be organised with specific focus on the challenge of including the global south             countries as part of the solution for climate change. The outcome of this discussion will be issued in a     press release and shall raise public awareness on the issue.

5. Lobbying for political action on this issue will take place at three fora: clean-development mechanism     (CDM) talks, development strategy formulation and activities under the presidency of Slovenia.

6. A climate-development position paper will be drafted and presented to CAN Europe, an EU-wide NGO     network, relevant EU institutions and Slovene MEPs. Through the co-operation with CAN Europe,             Slovenia should find itself better represented at the EU-level on issues regarding the debate on the         synergy between climate-development cooperation. Slovenian MEPs will be encouraged to provide         better insight in the Slovenian situation and proposals on climate change. Similarly, the position             paper will be presented at the Agree.net Seminar where it is expected that skills of representatives     from NGDO representatives from Central Europe will be developed to take home this debate.

In the course of project implementation, FOCUS along with Humanitas and Umanotera will work closely with Sloga, the Slovenian NGDO platform, in its preparation for the Presidency.