Welcome to the CERI webpage!
Carpathian EcoRegion Initiative is a coalition of NGOs and research institutes working towards a common vision for conservation and sustainable development of the Carpathians.
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Become a member
Membership is open to NGOs, academic and research institutes committed to sign up to the CERI vision statement and accepting the CERI Statutes.
Support us
All support will be used within the CERI vision, for conservation of the unique Carpathian Biodiversity.
for any kind of cooperation or support
Provide us with your pictures/photographs to be used for free for the promotion of Carpathian region and conservation of biodiversity
Initiate cooperation with CERI network, contact us to elaborate common project
Take advantage of CERI expertise and involve CERI experts into your projects
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Environmental Education
The Carpathian Environmental Outlook (KEO) is being developed under the guidance of UNEP. CERI experts are involved in the preparation of the publication and are commenting on the individual chapters in order to ensure the public voice is heard already during the phase of KEO preparation. The publication will serve as the unique summary of the main environmental information/data about the Carpathian Ecoregion. However, the KEO is targeted to experts and stakeholders involved/interested in environmental issues in the Carpathians. In order to make this information available, usefull and attractive for broader audience - schools, protected area managers, local people etc., CERI is raising funds for elaboration and printing of the environmental education manual “World of Carpathians”, which will provide the shortened information in understandable language combined with proposals for practical conservation indoor and outdoor activities, work sheets and drawings. In 2006 CERI submitted the project proposal to the German DBU foundation. The aim of this publication is to make people aware of connections between living things, their habitats and the potential economic benefits of conservation, as well as helping develop skills and improve knowledge of individuals in the fields of environmental protection and conservation. CERI recognizes that the more familiar people (schools, universities, professors, media, NGOs, governments and local authorities) are with the environment and how it works, the better they can recognize specific environmental problems and anticipate possible outcomes.
In order to acknowledge the importance of environmental education, based on its relevance to the Carpathian Convention (Article 13), and based on the interest of so many CERI member NGOs in this subject and the success of CERI with environmental education in the past, CERI members decided to form Environmental and Sustainable Education Working Group in 2006. The so called ESDE WG had its first meeting in September 2006. The aim of the meeting was to initiate the development of Carpathian Workbook on Environmental Education, which will specify the priorities and summarize approaches to environmenal education at the Carpathian region level for various kinds of target groups. Based on the Workbook, the national sets of trainings/seminars and educational actions will be organised in the upcoming years.
CERI started to collect the contacts on the Educational organisations and ecocentres within the whole region in order to become part of the Carpathian Clearinghouse, what will provide space for further cooperation and common projects among the Carpathian countries.
Externally, activities planned at the meeting in September 2006 include strategies for stimulating better communication between relevant government bodies over the environment and educating NGO representatives to disseminate environmental information and make their work more transparent, as well as preparing environmental information and education materials, taking as much advantage of the website as possible to improve channels of communication and distribution of environmental information.
Contributing to the process of elaboration of the KEO publication
The Carpathian Environmental Outlook (KEO) is being developed under the guidance of UNEP. CERI experts are involved in the preparation of the publication and are commenting on the individual chapters in order to ensure the public voice is heard already during the phase of KEO preparation. The publication will serve as the unique summary of the main environmental information/data about the Carpathian Ecoregion. However, the KEO is targeted to experts and stakeholders involved/interested in environmental issues in the Carpathians. The KEO, from UNEP-GRID, as a new publication on the status of the Carpathians with forward and backward looking scenarios concerning the sustainable development of the region based on an exhaustive list of indicators will serve as an additional communications tool and will complement the work with CERI’s own publications. CERI is contributing to the preparation of the report by involvement of its experts in working group related to biodiversity in the Carpathians.
CERI will follow the process of KEO elaboration in 2007 and its experts will represent Carpathian NGOs and research institutes at all relevant meetings.