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The
Tacis Environmental Awareness Raising Programme |
The challenges facing the environment of the former Soviet Union are amongst the world's most acute. The health of millions is affected by pollution. Economies in transition face the huge costs of wasted resources. Yet crises and other priorities prevent many countries from concentrating on their environment.
In October 1995, over forty environment ministers from across Europe met in Sofia, Bulgaria, to review the Environment for Europe process, a set of initiatives they had launched four years before to catalyse environmen-tal reform. The ministers concluded that the best way to achieve lasting improvement was, whenever possi-ble, to involve the people directly affected. That is why their concluding statement called for public participation in environmental decision-making.
The European Union heard this call. In its member states and abroad, the European Commission set up projects to raise the public's awareness of environmen-tal issues and increase public participation in decision-making processes.
On 1 February 1997, the European Union's Tacis Programme launched a comprehensive ECU 2. 9 million project to raise environmental awareness across the New. Independent States of the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. It is due to run for 18 months.
It has one overall goal: -to raise the status of environ-mental issues in every one of Tacis' thirteen partner countries and, quite simply, to involve as many people in the discussion of environmental issues as possible.
To this end, it will concentrate its efforts on three target groups by:
First, the programme will undertake ground-breaking qualitative and quantitative opinion research to assess and analyse barriers and opportunities relating to public participation. Then, it will translate this understanding, material and data into a powerful programme of legisla-tive support and mass communication.
To be successful, we cannot rely on our own perceptions. We need to learn about those of our audiences. That is why we will use interviews, telephone polling and focus groups to learn how environmental problems and decision-making are really perceived in the region.
Second, we believe that the power of example is the strongest. That is why we will research and identify local environmental initiatives and examples of best practice across the region. That will help us heed the call of the UN's 1992 Earth Summit, which asked the world's governments to promote the adoption by local commu-nities of their own environmental priorities known as Local Agenda 21.
Third, we will research all donor-funded environmental projects in the region and identify model environmental legislation. -We will make this information available to decision-makers through the World Wide Web.
Fourth, we will convene a group of experts to help us identify and collect the world's best environmental films and documentaries. We will dub them into local languages and make them available through video lending libraries.
Our research is the foundation upon which we will build our programme. Its broad outlines are already clear, but we fully expect the findings to change the plans we have made, and whose outline follows.
We will work with Members of Parliament who are already committed to environmental change to run a training programme for other members. The insights . they will gain will be valuable when legislating and supervising the actions of governments. We will ask Members to identify a national environmental issue and to prepare legislation to deal with it. Two Open Parliament Meetings in each country will keep the momentum going, and an Interparliamentary Seminar will allow participants from different countries to exchange experiences.
We will help NGOs develop into sustainable institutions that work together, are capable of participating actively in public debates and know how to build coalitions with other actors in government and the media. To do this, we will research and prepare three NGO information packs which will be launched and refined at regional training seminars and distributed as widely as possible using mass-marketing techniques. We will also run thirteen national conferences to give NGOs the oppor-tunity to build links with each other.
Pressure for environmental change is most powerful at the grassroots level. Parliamentarians, NGOs and the media will react to public demands for a cleaner and safer environment. Conversely, apathy is the worst enemy of change. That is why we will use different instruments to reach as wide a constituency as possi-ble with a simple message: change is possible - if you get involved. We will produce and broadcast TV docu-mentaries and radio magazines. We will weave envi-ronmental story lines to a radio soap opera currently attracting over twelve million listeners every week. Factsheets and discussion panels will back this up.
The media, too, needs help -to learn how to handle environmental stories. We will produce • a training package that will stimulate news reporting by address-ing the needs of trainers as well as journalists. Launched and refined through training seminars, they will be made available to journalism schools throughout the region. In addition, we will also identify and exploit every available opportunity to engage the media with public participation issues.
The Programme Coordination Office is located at Ogiivy Public Relations Worldwide. It liaises with the Commission, helps define strategy and directs the flow of the programme.
In addition, there are four Regional Coordination Offices in St. Petersburg, Kiev, Almaty and Tbilisi. The Regional Coordinators ensure the day-to-day management of the programme, the provision of all logistical needs to the programme, the necessary networking and the local media relations.
Finally, a number of specialists will become involved on a task-specific basis to carry out research, prepare material, run seminars and evaluate the programme's impact.
The Commission has awarded the contract to a consortium led by Ogiivy Public Relations Worldwide which unites the expertise of Helsinki University Knowledge Services, Arc Consulting, the BBC's Marshall Plan of the Mind and Okomedia. The Tacis Environmental Awareness Raising Programme The Programme Coordination Ofice is located at Ogilvy, Adams & Rinehart/Brussels.
Patrick Worms, Programme Coordinator
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Tel (+32-2) 545 66 00
Fax (+32-2) 545 66 10
E-mail patrick.worms@ogilvy.be
Chris Le Breton, Programme Task Manager
European Comission
Tel (+32-2) 295 63 36
Fax (+32-2) 296 74 82
E-mail Christopher.LEBRETON@dg1a.cec.be
The
Tacis Environmental Awareness Raising Programme,
E-mail: tacisenv@mailbox.alkor.ru, phone/fax
+7-812-273 21 13
Last update 98.12.09 by Jonas.Pertoft@info.slu.se
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