Project Title: Safeguarding climate while developing? It’s possible!

Implementation Organisation: Focus Association for Sustainable Development, Slovenia

Total Budget: 21 030 euros

Total request from Fund: 17 220 euros

Description of the Project and Expected Results:

FOCUS, an NG(D)O with a membership of individuals, is mainly working on the environment, energy, climate change and consumption. The main objective of the project proposed by FOCUS was to raise awareness and the capacity of NGOs, politicians and the public to work towards integrating climate change in the development debate at national and EU level. What is new is that it intended to organise e-debates with members of the diaspora from the South living in Slovenia to bring Southern issues closer to the Slovenian NG(D)Os.

Results after Implementation:

In its final report FOCUS indicated that it had developed a questionnaire and held interviews with members of the diaspora. However, response to the questionnaire was slow which had an impact on the development and printing of  the planned brochure on the links between climate change and development. It pointed out that the PF was elementary in developing FOCUS’ knowledge of development cooperation, which it did not have prior to the PF project. It had now become an important source of information on the link between development and climate change (focussing on the near neighbourhood in particular, see the 2008 FOCUS report), sending out regular e-newsletters.

During the project FOCUS worked very closely with the national NG(D)O platform Sloga, of which it is a member. They organised a series of workshops together targeted at NG(D)Os and young people with  mixed success, as the targeted audience was not always interested. However, the end result was a small network of NG(D)Os willing to cooperate on the issue of climate change and development. Although FOCUS originally intended to also work at the EU level, it limited itself to the national level during the implementation of the project. While ministries did show interest in participating in some events (e.g. the Roundtable organised together with Sloga on 27 February), the follow-up effects were not always impressive, also because development cooperation was not a priority during the Slovenian Presidency taking place during the implementation period of the PF project.

However, FOCUS felt that overall the PF project had been a success in that it helped them to increase their membership from 32 to 46 members, the cooperation with Sloga had proven very effective and would be continued, while the additional staff member recruited for the project would be retained for at least another 2 years as the issue of climate change in development cooperation had moved up on FOCUS’ agenda to become one of the five key issues for the organisation.