Project Title: The Access Initiative: good environmental governance - a Prerequisite of sustainable development

Implementing Organisation: Environment Management & Law Association (EMLA), Hungary

Total Budget: 48 000 euros

Total request from Fund: 37 500 euros

Description of the Project and Expected Results:

EMLA presented itself as part of the core team of The Access Initiative (TAI), a global network set up in 1999, to promote access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making. Its main aim for the PF project was to build the capacity of TAI partners in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and strengthen their engagement in the EU development policy debate, focussing on environment and good governance. Click here to read more about The Access Initiative

By using TAI’s experience in working with partners in the South it hoped to strengthen the communication between the NMS partners and those in the South as a basis for the NMS NGOs contribution to the EU development policy debate. The participating NMS NGOs would be invited to form a coalition officially approved and agreed to by the respective NGO Boards. It needs to be noted that while the project was supposed to start in May 2007 it only started in July due to personnel and capacity constraints. In its project proposal EMLA already indicated that national activities planned by the partner NGOs would be their own responsibility and where national TAI members were not interested to participate, EMLA would be approaching other NG(D)Os.

Results after Implementation:

One of the interesting initiatives developed in the context of the project was the setting up of a mailing list of the participating NGOs from the NMS and from the South to promote twinning and the adoption of a ‘declaration of coalition’ between the twinning organisations. As a result NGOs from Poland and Tanzania have been cooperating more intensely, while the Hungarian national strategy developed by the HAND/EMLA (July 2008) includes the need to work closely with VACNE, a Vietnamese NGDO, but so far no practical twinning activities can be found.

A project closing conference, called ‘Development Day’, took place on 29 to 31 October 2008 in Sligo (Ireland), bringing together CSO representatives from the New Member States and from the Global South[1], however, as pointed out in the final report no EU representatives participated. The conference participants adopted a common position, which was communicated to the EU Commission DG Development and the European Parliament Committee on Development (DEVE) in December 2008. The common position was favourably received.

HAND and WRI (a USA based organisation) were invited to help with developing a relationship with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs  and EMLA developed a national strategy, together with HAND, which can be found on the EMLA website: http://www.emla.hu/aa2.10.0/apc-aa-files/tai/TAI_DEV_strat_hu.doc

[1] See also http://www.emla.hu/aa2.10.0/apc-aa-files/tai/TAI%20and%20Development%20Dev%20Day%20Info%20Note.pdf