Croatia ratified the Aarhus-Convention in the year 2007 and thus showed its commitment to public participation in environmental projects. The legislative implementation was finalized with the amendment of the Environmental Protection Act and the enactment of the special regulations on permit procedure, Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment. The first National implementation report1 was published in May 2009. It laid out in detail, which efforts Croatia had made to implement the provisions of the Aarhus Convention into Croatian law and which activities were carried out to support its implementation.
Das Projekt "Hunting for sustainability (HUNT)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Agricultural Research Council, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute durchgeführt. Objective: Biodiversity conservation increasingly takes place outside protected areas in multiple-use landscapes. Success in achieving biodiversity objectives is closely linked to the extent to which conservation can be integrated with the cultural, social and economic objectives and aspirations of people. Beliefs, perceptions, attitudes and preferences about biodiversity are central to the decisions made by individuals and groups about natural resource management. In this project we will use hunting as a lens through which to examine the wider issue of how people interact with biodiversity. Hunting provides a valuable case study in the use of biodiversity because it involves tens of millions of people globally, it is conducted across a wide range of land tenure and use systems, and it is an important source of revenue and protein, particularly in developing countries. Hunting is embedded in social structures and cultural patterns and has a key role in conflicts over natural resource management around the world. Our multidisciplinary team will assess the social, cultural, economic and ecological functions and impacts of hunting across a range of contexts in Europe and Africa. Our study systems fall across economic gradients from the richest to the poorest countries and encompass environments from the Arctic to the Equator. We seek to understand what influences attitudes to hunting, how these attitudes influence and determine individual and societal behaviour in relation to hunting, and finally, how hunting behaviour influences biodiversity. Consequently, we will integrate social, economic and ecological scientific disciplines and engage with a diverse selection of stakeholders to develop novel approaches to the mitigation of natural resource conflicts involving hunting. Finally, our results will be interpreted in respect to current and future EU policy on hunting and biodiversity conservation and contribute to the global debate about the sustainable use of biodiversity.
The idea of establishing a National Training and Competence Centre (TCC) for the Water Sector in Croatia was born during the visit of a GWP delegation in May 2010 to Karlovac. The following written project design envisioned a two-stage introduction of the centre. First, a pilot phase should raise awareness among actors of the Croatian water sector and clarify key questions about organisational matters and funding. Then, based on the findings from the pilot phase, an implementation proposal should be developed to secure the long-term viability of the centre. The present report describes the activities and results of the pilot phase.