Participation in river basin management planning (18/05/07)

Hello everyone:

From time to time it is useful to remind ourselves of the full breadth of CEPA techniques and how they help in wetland conservation. Our Senior Regional Advisor for Europe, Tobias Salathé, reported recently on our Web site of progress in developing an effective participatory process with a broad range of stakeholders in river basin management planning in the greater part of the Sava river floodplain in Croatia.

Part of this area includes the Lonjsko Polje Regional Park, Croatia's largest Ramsar site, and it is the Park’s administration unit that has taken the lead in developing a participatory planning process to address the challenges of protecting the natural and cultural heritage of the area, managing regular important flood events, and responding in a sustainable way to the increasing demands for development activities concerning local tourism, river navigation, hydro-electricity production, and urbanization.

This list of challenges already suggests that a large number of stakeholders will need to work together in developing a planning process. Through production of a Croatian-English version of Ramsar’s river basin guidelines (launched on World Wetlands Day this February), and then successfully engaging 46 key stakeholders from a very broad range of key stakeholders in the area in planning meetings, it is clear that the Park administration has both the necessary technical knowledge and CEPA skills to effectively engage and lead stakeholders in the development of a management process. The stakeholders come from 11 administrative units of five different Ministries dealing with Culture; Agriculture, Forestry & Water Management; Sea, Tourism, Transport & Development; Environmental Protection, Physical Planning & Construction; and Economy, Labour & Entrepreneurship; as well as representatives of the regional authorities and towns concerned, and representatives of public services for protected areas, Croatian Waters and Croatian Forests, tourist associations, national and local NGOs, the scientific community and international organizations including the International Sava River Commission, UNDP, IUCN and REC.

As Tobias points out, this successful process will serve as an example of an integrated management approach from which other sites may also benefit. Read the full report here http://ramsar.org/wn/w.n.croatia_sava_stakeholders.htm.

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Sandra Hails, CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176; Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
CEPA mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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