Priority environmental investment programme: Development and implementation

This paper is created to serve as a methodological base and possible work plan for Assistance in Priority Environmental Investment Programme Development and Implementation in the Republic of Serbia. It will contribute to improved mechanisms for selection of priority environmental investments. Also, the paper should outline a scope of work for technical assistance for Republic of Serbia in developing mechanisms for identifying and selecting priority environmental investments. The main feature of the long-term environmental policy in the Republic of Serbia is absence of integrated approach, which goes hand by hand with the international environmental standards, and lack of efficient economic instruments and regulations. It causes an inadequate technology policy and location of the polluters. Besides that there has been a lack of appropriate environmental monitoring system good enough to provide efficient ex-ante and ex-post protection. It has caused a lot of environmental damages so that a completely new approach in the field of environment is expected to be created out of which the Priority Environmental Investment Programme (PEIP) should be a main tool for experience of good environmental governance in the Republic of Serbia as well as in the region of SEE

Institution Building and Strategic Planning for the Sustainable Local Development in the Republic of Serbia

Sustainable regional and rural development policy could be seen as a tool for the efficient administration and utilization of comparative and competitive advantages of local community. The process of decentralisation and democratisation as a crucial - key instrument for the better local development is ongoing in the Republic of Serbia. In the first step it is connected with further capacity building on the local level, finishing of privatisation and decentralization of real estates on the local level as well as with completing the institutional reform. Local development must be based upon the so-called “good administration” which, in its essence, presupposes local strategic action planning as a basis for regional and rural development and a factor of competitiveness (“bottom-up” approach). The local community must be prepared for the implementation of such approach that means building up the needed institutions (formal and informal agents) and their capability for the creation of needed structures on the local level so as to be able to implement the proposed decisions in an acceptable way and efficiently