The overall objective of the project is to strengthen CSOs capacities to participate in local andnational energy and climate change (CC) policy formulation and enforcement. Public participation in decision-making is a core issue of good governance.

The Covenant of Mayors(CoM) is the mainstream European movement involving local and regional authorities, voluntarilycommitted to increasing energy efficiency and using renewable energy sources on their territories. By their commitment, Covenant signatories aim to meet and exceed 20% CO2 reduction objective by2020. Eleven Belarusian cities have joined the CoM since the 2011 and, in most cases, it was initiatedby CSOs. Untill now, there was no official Covenant Coordinator in Belarus and there is a lack ofnetworking between CoM cities and interaction with CSOs and national authorities.The project concentrates on building primarily the external capacities of NGOs to“participate in an informed and skilled manner in environmental policy formulation and naturalresource management, collaborate in decision-making on key issues, and represent the interests ofcitizens and communities in environment and sustainable development discussions and debates”.

As a result of the project, there will be new professional skills developed to widen participatory practices in environmental governance, new approaches and means of coordination among civil society organizations and other project’s partners promoted and knowledge exchanged. The project demonstrates good practice on how non-governmental sector can closely and successfully cooperate with the government in a critical for the people’s well-being area of environmental governance. The demonstration effects will have positive influence on civil society at encouraging them to engage with authorities in other fields as well.

Contacts

Matthias Grätz

Project Manager

Tel.: +49 40 5330 7076

Project Partners

Ecopartnership Belarus

Support

This project is supported by the European Union