The 1st meeting of Rio Conventions Project Advisory Board took place on 29 February, 2008 at Arena di Serdica Hotel in Sofia. The project Advisory Board meets annually and presents a platform for discussing project progress with a wide range of stakeholders: state institutions, district governments and municipalities, academic and non-governmental organizations, the private sector and media.

 

The first meeting of the Advisory Board gathered more than 50 participants from the above mentioned stakeholder groups. Main issues discussed during the event included: project first year achievements and planned activities in 2008; draft structure of the Training Course in the cross-cutting area of environmental protection and regional development for public officials from Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works and Ministry of Environment and Waters to be developed under the project; a pilot set of indicators for monitoring the integration of global environmental issues into regional and spatial planning plans and strategies in Bulgaria.

 

During the discussion that followed the meeting, all the members of the Advisory Board expressed their satisfaction with the project progress achieved during its first year of operations. Major recommendations that were made by the participants regarding the future implementation of the project included: upgrade upon the results of similar projects implemented by UNDP and other donor institutions in the recent past; improved cooperation among educational institutions in Bulgaria in terms of exchanging students, developing an on-line variant of the cross-cutting Training Program in order to attract the interest of a wider circle of young people and experts to the problems of integration of planning and environmental issues; better communication between state institutions, municipalities and academic organizations in order to improve the collection, processing and exchange of environmental and statistical data relevant to regional and spatial planning in Bulgaria.