EcoContact will ensure the visibility and promotion of the project activities and events through press releases, informational leaflets and local media. The meetings, roundtables and workshops organized within the framework of the project, together with the EIA pilot project, will contribute to a better understanding of the role of NGOs in the consultation on EIA process and representatives of local and national authorities also will help NGO to develop and implement democratic and transparent principles.
Visibility rules will be applied to the public events. In addition, all information about the project?s progress will be provided to the beneficiaries or partners during the meetings and activities. The information about events and results, decision and discussed documents will be uploaded on EcoContact web page www.aarhus.vox.md and all interested people will have access to this resource.
Information about the project and its components has been actively shared using online and offline tools. The NGO's contacts database was used to disseminate relevant information to a large number of users, and information about the events was published on EcoContact's website and Facebook page, as well as those of the Ministry of Environment and other stakeholders.
Gender Focus
Promotion of gender and social equality are crosscutting priorities of EcoContact and its partners. The identification of gender aspects and applicable gender mainstreaming tools for each project activity has been done during on the project design phase in line with the corporate gender action plans of the United Nations and OSCE. Consideration of gender aspects is included to the whole project cycle including monitoring, reporting and evaluation. The EcoContact staff participated in training on gender. A Gender Mainstreaming checklist is included in the EcoContact Operational manual and will be used for the project implementation stage.
The project will give due consideration to the needs and roles of women in NGOs? development and implementation of the actions. The project will aim at ensuring active involvement of women in project
activities.
EcoContact is implementing the project Environmental Informational Center supported by OSCE Mission in Moldova, following the OSCE guideline for gender mainstreaming in Aarhus Centers.
Based on it the Aarhus Centre staff, policy makers and other stakeholders are committed to integrate gender mainstreaming principles into their work and to actively contribute to ensure that activities are inclusive and do not perpetuate inequality.
Inovative Financial Mechanisms
The major benefit of knowledge management is that information is easily shared between implementation team members and partners, and that knowledge and information are structured as institutional memory, which is mean that project, actions will continue even if someone will leave the team or project.
In EcoContact are used two different ways of managing knowledge: first one is using technologybased systems, and second one is using softer systems.
Technology-based systems ? this is a collaborative information stoking system (CISS), where everyone can add, and using and edit information. EcoContact CISS include programs and databases on the CSO's intranet, with information organized so that everyone can access them, according with the rights based on internal bylaw. Administrative rights have the IT System administrator.
Softer systems ? These are specific actions or meetings that are organized to share knowledge and help members of the team, Working groups and partners and connect with one another. The following
methods are part of EcoContact soft knowledge management systems:
? Mentoring.
? Instant messaging and intranet forums.
? Specific actions, like after action reviews (evaluation) after significant events, and post implementation reviews after a project has been completed.
Communities of practice, which help team members doing the same thing in different areas to meet informally and share information.
In the implementation process of the project it is planned to collect case which will help to investigate a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context especially when the boundaries between the new legislation and practical context and not clearly yet. EcoContact believe that the case research strategy is well-suited to capturing the knowledge of practitioners and developing theories from it. In other words, EcoContact will use a case as not a controlled experiment; rather will be an examination of ?real-life? and knowledge in context. Such, case studies can be used to help develop practitioners, better researchers and the relevant body of knowledge.
Policy Influence
The project had a major impact on the development of legislation and policy on environmental protection in the Republic of Moldova. Thus, as a result of the project implementation a number of key documents were developed, including:
a) Implementation Guide on procedures of EIAs of public and private projects. This guide complements the Law no. 86 of May 29, 2014, on environmental impact assessment and describes step-by-step EIA stages that are implemented in Moldova. The guide has mainly been developed for:
? Central and local public authorities (in particular the authority for environmental protection, which is the Ministry of Environment);
? Natural and legal persons involved in the coordination and management of the system of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in Moldova;
? Members of the Committee of Experts (created and active within the Ministry of Environment) to ensure the implementation procedure of carrying out preliminary assessments;
? Initiators and project owners (e.g. of public and private projects that affect the environment);
? NGOs and individuals wishing to participate in the EIA process; and
? Professors that can use it in training on the EIA procedure.
b) Database, which was developed in order to facilitate the process on environmental impacts assessment. It is essential for the national environment authority as well as for project owners, because it helps to ensure the necessary accuracy and speed of the EIA process.
c) Guide on Public Participation in EIA process. The importance of this guide consists in the fact that it helps people to understand their rights and duties during the EIA process and makes them not only as participants but also peers regarding the quality and fairness of the process.
d) EIA case study, which helps to illustrate the actual situation of EIA in the Republic of Moldova, and underlines the specific characteristics of the EIA process in different domains and contexts.
Elaboration of guidelines and studies on the EIA process was possible through the strong collaboration of EcoContact with the Ministry of Environment, which contributed not only to the development of useful instruments for the Government, but also to identifying the legislative gaps in the process. Another strong partner in this process were companies that provide services in EIA and offered support to the authorities in conducting SEA. The members of NGOs network played a significant role in the development of the Guide on Public Participation in the EIA process by bringing their expertise, knowledge and perception of the process to the discussion table.
In order to improve EIA in Moldova, a set of recommendations (informative note) for other relevant legislative acts were submitted:
1) Law on Environmental Impact Assessment;
2) Contravention Code of the Republic of Moldova; and
3) Law authorizing the execution of construction works.
The informative note was drafted to review the legal framework in order to ensure effective implementation of the EIA procedure in practice. Initiating the draft law on amending some legislative acts was determined by the necessity to strengthen and improve the legislative framework regarding the EIA procedure. The draft law establishes and develops a number of new provisions aimed at improving the implementation of the EIA procedure.
Another positive outcome of the project consists in the fact that members of EcoContact consulted different parties interested in the EIA process (e.g. project owners, initiators, legal and natural persons that can be affected by this project, public in general, etc.) and contributed to increasing public awareness regarding the EIA procedure and legislation. Consequently it is valid to say that through this project, EcoContact effectively participated in environmental policy and legislation formulation, as well as the decision-making process on key environmental issues.
Project sustainability
The sustainability of the project was shown through:
- Level of continuity and delivery of project goods and services (the Ministry of Environment due to EU-NGOs project will have a data base for processing EIA documents; a guide for general public was developed for EIA initiators; study case on EIA procedure in Moldova, and specific actions to be considered in different field assessment; central and local authorities will be having a guide on various forms of public engagement in decision making process; authorities representatives and other stakeholders trained in EIA procedure etc.). Moreover, the capacities of NGOs were increased towards project writing, implementing and reporting; a road map in environmental governance concerns developed and presented to the key institutions;
- Changed cause by the project (legal framework improved through expertise offered by EcoContact, instruments of participation in decision making process created; EIA Guide on procedure implementation developed and approved by Ministry of Environment as official tool; engagement of different stakeholders interested in EIA and environmental matters at both levels etc.)
- New initiatives caused by the project (creation of NGOs network capable in monitoring and evaluating EIA procedure application)
Project Results
The project entitled ?Enforcing the Environmental Governance in Moldova by involving public in Environmental Impact Assessment (EAI) process? had as objective to support the process of the implementation of the Environmental Strategy of the Republic of Moldova by developing participatory mechanism of the implementation of the EIA process. The implementation process took places between February 2015 and March 2016. During this period EcoContact implemented a diversity of activities and developed a set of materials in order to achieve the proposed objectives. The activities implemented by EcoContact had two orientations: first one was dedicated to the develop capacities of NGOs to take part in development of the public engagement plan of the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment and to take part in public consultations in the frame of EIA procedures and the second one to strengthen capacities to implement and manage environmental projects and programmes of the EcoContact team and other partners.
In order to achieve the first objective, EcoContact concentrated in capacity building of EIA system through Informational seminars regarding new legislation and system on and training for NGOs and authorities where approximately 25 representatives (authorities, NGOs, experts, consultants, media) were trained on EIA and more than 150 were informed about it. Another important aspect was the creation of initiative group on EIA, collection of available cases (submitted at the Ministry of Environment, responsible institution of EIA) and elaborating one case study for public involvement in EIA. The case study on public involvement was mainly identified through application of survey on more than 60 organizations from the whole country and analysis of 15 resource centers. The results and recommendations of the survey can be found in the attached documents of the project. For the consolidation of knowledge and system in Moldova, a set of materials were developed. The most significant Guide was the application of EIA in Moldova, which was approved by Ministry of Environments and will be used as official document for the guidance of those who want to initiate an EIA procedure.
The second objective of the project was met by training the NGOs from Republic of Moldova in various fields such as: negotiation, using IT instruments, diplomacy, resource mobilizations etc. All the provided training aimed to the straitening the capacities of NGOs and to help them in consolidating their position in the society.
One of the biggest successes of the project besides the previously mentioned was the development of Forum of Environmental NGOs 2015 edition. The Forum gathered around 100 representatives of environmental NGOs, expert?s researchers, academia, business entities, embassies etc. The Forum resulted with the elaboration of a Position Paper which was submitted to the relevant authorities.
Overall, the project is considered to be a successful one that has brought important documents and knowledge in order to achieve the set objectives by Moldova environmental Strategy, implementation of EIA law designed to provide value and benefits to NGOs, society, business, authorities and those interested by EIA on the long-term basis. Thus, the greatest cumulative positive impact of the project is yet to come.
