Carpathians Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Interreg Centralparks

Banská Bystrica, 17-18^th June

On 17-18th June 2019, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, will welcome a variety of national experts and protected area managers from the Carpathian region to jointly address issues concerning biodiversity and landscape conservation in the Carpathians. The two-day event will foster transnational cooperation between seven neighbouring states, Parties to the Carpathian Convention and will allow sharing expertise and best practices identified in the Carpathian region in order to improve Carpathian protected areas capacities in response to biodiversity loss. The event is organized by the State Nature Conservancy of the Slovak Republic in cooperation with the Ekopsychology Society from Poland as part of the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Centralparks project.

The Transnational Thematic Task Force on biodiversity and landscape conservation is one task force of five in total established within the project. Going in line with the aim of Centralparks, the task forces will be focusing on key pressures driving biodiversity loss in the Carpathians, such as infrastructure development, tourism pressure, degradation, fragmentation and destruction of habitats, poaching, illegal logging, pollution and climate change. These expert groups are tasked with the goal of the development of strategic policy documents and tools that will support the Carpathian region on the long-term. The first Thematic Transnational Task Force Meeting on biodiversity and landscape conservation will initiate the three-year-long joint work to develop the Carpathian strategy for enhancing biodiversity and landscape conservation in, and around all Carpathian Protected Areas.

16-17th of April

The official Kick-off meeting of the Centralparks project took place on 16-17^th April in Bolzano, Italy. The meeting welcomed 8 project partners as well as representatives of national Ministries and the Carpathian Convention. The expert meeting provided a platform for intense knowledge exchange through action plans, strategies and cooperation strategies that will provide guidance for the project.

The Centralparks project, co-funded by the European Commission through the INTERREG CENTRAL EUROPE Programme, has the overall budget of 1.6 Mio. EUR. The project unites 8 project partners and 8 associated partners from 9 European countries, aiming to harmonise management capacities in Carpathian Protected Areas. The project will support nature protection and local sustainable development, improve integrated environmental management capacities and policies, and will focus on mitigating current threats and pressures to biodiversity.

The kick-off meeting was opened by the welcome speech of Lead Partner responsible Isidoro de Bortoli, Prof. Roland Psenner, the president of Eurac Research, and Dr. Thomas Philipp Streifeneder, the head of the research institute of regional development. As the project focuses on the Carpathians which are a strong link between the project partners, Eleonora Musco, representing the Carpathian Convention officially welcomed the partnership.

Over the next 3 years, guidelines, strategic documents and pilot actions will be implemented. During the meeting, the three Thematic Work packages have been presented by the Work package leaders. These work packages focus on the integration of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the Carpathian Region, building capacities of Carpathian Protected Area managers and strenghtening ecosystem services in the Carpathians.