Project Kick-off

16-17th of April

The official Kick-off meeting of the Centralparks project took place on 16-17th 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.

It was a strong and productive start. We are looking forward to the fruitful cooperation!