The Capacity Building Program for the Balkan countries is an initiative of the Greek Ministry for the Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works, in the framework of the OECD Development Assistance Committee -DAC.
The program has an overall budget of about one million EUR and a total duration of 18 months. The Balkan countries involved in the program are Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, FYROM, Romania and Yugoslavia.
All these countries have ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change, while two of them (Bulgaria and Romania) have also signed the Kyoto Protocol. These two countries belong to the Annex I of the Convention, while the rest are for the present not included in Annex I.
Through this program, Greece, as an Annex II Party of the UNFCCC, aims to provide financial and technical support to the above mentioned countries in order to assist them in enhancing their capabilities to achieve the objectives of the Convention. This can be done through the implementation of the provisions of the Convention and the preparation for their effective participation in the Kyoto Protocol process.
The program started at the beginning of 2001, while the kick-off meeting took place in Athens on March 2001.The successful implementation of the program requires the active participation of all governmental and non-governmental organisations throughout the countries involved in the program. In this way reliable data will be collected while the results from each different task will meet the needs of the countries in question regarding climate change. Furthermore, the active participation of all actors involved will safeguard the continuation of climate change related activities in the future under local responsibility and will promote the collaboration between countries in this crucial international environmental effort.