July 12–13, 2013, Irpin, Kyiv Oblast — The Eco-NGOs Forum "Building Environmental Democracy in Ukraine: Challenges and Tasks for Environmental Civil Society" will be held at the Conference Hall Irpin (118-A Zhovtneva St.). The registration will begin at 10:00 a.m.

The Forum will be the first public event under the EU project on "Building Environmental Democracy in Ukraine" implemented by the National Environmental NGO "MAMA-86." The event's objective is to help all interested representatives from the civil society environmental movement coordinate their efforts and enhance their capacity to participate in environmental policy making, implementation, and monitoring.

The Forum's participants will include representatives from environmental NGOs, the Ecology & Natural Resources Ministry, and local authorities, as well as international and domestic institutions engaging in nature conservation, civil society development, and public participation in decision-making.

The Forum will include the following sessions:

• Implementing European environmental policy standards in Ukraine;
• Public participation in environmental policy in Ukraine: key challenges and achievements;
• Identifying key needs and necessary steps to strengthen environmental NGOs;
• Environmental democracy open space;
• Environmental policy problems: from perception to formulation.

A preliminary program of the Forum can be found here.

We kindly ask participants to register online by filling out the form (not later than July 4): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1i7MEcdWKFHTgPO2FfvUjNE58GUOe_JX07AQFECGlbbc/viewform.

The event organizers will be able to reimburse a limited number of participants for their travel & accommodation expenses based on an analysis of the application forms. The selection results will be announced on July 5 at the latest.

For additional information please contact Olena Skrypko: +380 (44) 2270257; +380 (68) 373-71-25; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Public participation is of paramount importance to ensure Ukraine’s progress in implementation of its environmental policy, especially taking into account the challenges of the current state of environment, the lack of relevant horizontal and vertical policy coordination for good environmental governance, the nontransparent budgeting process and occurrences of misusing nature-conservation funds, and the weak traditions of following policy cycles, in particular on the regional and local level, etc.

The "Building Environmental Democracy in Ukraine" project's strategic goal is to increase the environmental policy effectiveness in Ukraine through an enhanced and qualified public participation in policy implementation. To achieve this goal, the project is encouraging a dialogue between different stakeholders in relevant political processes, improving information exchange and promoting transparency and integrity in the field of nature conservation activities, and strengthening the capacity of civil society organizations to participate in policy planning, implementation, monitoring, and assessment.