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 Policy and Legislation
Each of the CERI initiatives, where relevant, takes into account the Community environmental policy and Legislation and its proper implementation. Through the implementation of the Carpathian Convention, CERI as a new organization in terms of the ability to facilitate political links to ensure that the most relevant local conservation activities, information and attitudes reach the highest political levels, implementation and enforcement of Community environmental legislation – and particularly in innovative ways – is crucial to the future success of CERI. Every project with which CERI is involved – either as a Secretariat (network-wide) project, as a partner (CERI-“brokered”) or in terms of individual members’ projects endorsed by CERI (CERI-“certified”), has at least one component of implementation or enforcement of Community environmental policy and legislation.
CERI has established its Management Planning Working Group which is focused on the exchange of experiences and discussion on methodologies among the representatives from all Carpathian Countries – including the EU and Non-EU member states. This group ensures that the approaches in management planning adopted based on the requirements set by Habitat and Bird Directives are discussed on the regional level. Elaboration and finalisation of the management plans for protected areas including wider stakeholder involvement and designation of improved monitoring and evaluation systems remain the key challenges for Member States. CERI via its Management Planning Working Group contributes to reaching this Natura 2000 ambition.
CERI has initiated the work on the elaboration of the Carpathian Ecoregion Action Plan, which will formulate the regional priorities and approaches combining the Community environmental policy and legislation, CBD Programmes and Recommendations, with main focus based on the regional specifications.
Sustainable Development interlinks the core of international policies, initiatives and treaties, serving as the vision combining the economic growth and nature conservation in the Carpathians. Therefore CERI has this broad topic among its priorities in the area of environmental policy. The main focus is put on the rural development policies and tendencies and CERI has established the Environmental Policy and Rural Development Working Group (EPRD WG). The EPRD WG had its first meeting in autumn 2006 and its regional activities started in summer 2006.
Participation of CERI in The 6th ´Environment for Europe Conference´ in Belgrade
In May 2003, the Ministers at the 5th Environment for Europe (EfE) Ministerial Conference (Kyiv, Ukraine) took a historic decision and agreed to halt the loss of biological diversity by the year 2010. Governments of the pan-European region agreed to nine “Kyiv key sub targets” in seven areas: forests, agriculture, ecological networks, invasive alien species, biodiversity financing, biodiversity indicators and monitoring, and public awareness and participation. Therefore, they are committed to implement actions on the ground for the concrete achievement of these fundamental targets. The 6th Environment for Europe Conference in Belgrade will be held three years before the 2010 deadline. It will focus on implementation of decisions made in the EfE process. This will be a unique opportunity to assess how existing pan-European regional and sub-regional policies work for biodiversity conservation in the region and how they contribute to meeting the 2010 target.
As the biodiversity conservation is in the core of CERI long-term vision and activities, the network will get involved in the preparation activities for the Belgrade Conference and will contribute its part to the whole process and conference programme. Besides other involvement, which will be discussed, clarified and agreed within the NGO Conference preparatory forum in 2007, CERI aims to present itself directly during the conference in order to bring attention to the uniqueness of biodiversity in Carpathians, its main threats and the situation and initiatives undertaken for the improvement of present situation and for reaching the main goal - to halt the loss of biological diversity by the year 2010. CERI will ensure that the opinion of Carpathian NGOs and research institutes will be heard at the Conference.