Romanian Organization ProPark visits Georgia

With the support of the German Governmentthe working group of the project “Capacity Building Plans for Efficient Protected Area Management in the Eastern Europe” visited the Agency of Protected Areas of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection of Georgia. The mentioned Project is carried out in 23 countries of Eastern Europe including Georgia.

In the first phase of the project the assessment of the training needs for the personnel involved in the management of protected areas had been carried out. In the second phase it is planned to elaborate one regional and two national capacity building plans. For the elaboration of the regional plans Romania and Moldova were identified, as for the national planning Croatia is chosen as a target country. On the current stage the next target country should be identified.

For this purpose, on March 20, 2014, the project implementing party, representatives of Romanian organization ProPark visited Georgia. Under the scope of the visit, inception meeting at the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Protection was held, which was hosted by Rati Japaridze, the Chairman of the Agency of Protected Areas. The meeting aimed at detecting of the second potential beneficiary country to be involved in the project.   

During the meeting Rati Japaridze made a presentation about the needs in the field of the management of protected areas, as well as reported about implemented activities. It was decided that in case if Georgia is selected as a one of the beneficiary countries, a working group will be identified to coordinate elaboration of the long-term capacity building plan for Georgia’s protected areas.