Montenegrin Council approved major national documents

The Montenegrin National Council for sustainable development, climate change and ICZM held on 15 June 2016 its 30th meeting at the presidential palace in Podgorica. The objectives were to discuss and adopt the draft National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD), the documents related to the improvement of the coastal zone management and those related to the protection of water resources. The NSSD until 2030 is a comprehensive document, completely harmonised with the UN requirements and prepared in a broad consultation process. Three other documents presented were prepared with the support of PAP/RAC within the framework of the CAMP and GEF MedPartnership project in co-operation with the project partners. These are the Coastal Plan for Buna/Bojana transboundary river basin, the Spatial Plan for the entire coastal area and the Concept for the establishment of the Co-ordination mechanism for ICZM. The latter is one of the follow-up initiatives of the CAMP Montenegro project. A PAP/RAC representative who attended the meeting introduced the Buna/Bojana Plan that envisages also an agreement between Albania and Montenegro on joint co-ordination of activities for the improvement of the state of the environment and in particular better management of resources. The draft is being finalised by the responsible governmental bodies and is expected to be signed shortly. All the three documents were well accepted and approved for submission to the Government. The Drim watershed project and the state of water resources management in Montenegro in relation to EU requirements were discussed, too.

This National Council is chaired by the President of Montenegro, it has 27 members from various institutions, ministries, organisations, NGOs and experts. It has a role of providing recommendations and suggestions to the Government in implementing policies related to sustainable development, climate change and ICZM. Its main task is to contribute to better co-ordination of sectoral policies in all these fields.