ANPED Activities

Our programmes and activities can be subdivided in three interlinked categories:  
Acting as a platform for its members to identify common concerns and to design and implement activities through issue-related working groups;
Network support and capacity building activities;
Participation in international fora and policy processes, acting as a voice for its members.
Capacity Building

By working on cross-cutting issues which fit into various policy processes like the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UN CSD), the OECD, UNEP, European Union and ''Environment for Europe'' (EfE), ANPED endeavours to build the capacity of individual NGOs. This is in particular important for smaller, newly established, groups who are not yet part of other regional or international networks.

ANPED Annual General Meetings
ANPED NGO Capacity Building and Training on CSD
The CSD - the Commission on Sustainable Development - offers the world one of the most open and participatory intergovernmental processes on sustainability issues. With a renewed mandate from the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI), CSD has started to work on its second round of cluster themes.

Over the years, a great number of highly respected civil society representatives have however turned their back on a number of UN processes, leaving space open to itinerant global conference participants, poor on representation and issue knowledge and with even less accountability. As a result of this, the UN and civil society have become vulnerable to a variety of critical views pointing to the fact that the intergovernmental processes are far removed from the people themselves as well as their concerns.

By appearing to remove the intergovernmental processes from "we, the peoples", the very basis upon which they were supposed to rest, both the UN and civil society seem to fail to deliver on the basic values of democracy. Participation, transparency and accountability seem to be illusory values and whereas CSD could be conceived as a watch-dog for sustainability and environmental governance, the present praxis threatens to turn CSD into a travesty of democracy.

The main purpose of the ANPED NGO Capacity Building and Training on CSD is to bring about a renewed interest in the CSD process and in particular to bring into play NGOs from Central and Eastern Europe, South Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia to try and establish more concerted NGO action within the UNECE region.

ANPED''s overall programme focus is sustainable consumption and production. This will mean that the CSD activities are put in the context of the crosscutting issues, with particular attention being paid to sustainable consumption and production as one of the three overarching objectives of sustainable development. ANPED''s work in this area is linked closely with the monitoring of national strategies for sustainable development and the incorporation in these strategies of support for the 10 Year Framework/Marrakech process.

Together with WWF and Greenpeace ANPED has formed a coalition on Environmental Governance with the purpose to monitor what is happening within the UN on this issue in relation to ‘initiative 169’. This information will be shared with the participating NGOs in order to help build a better understanding of the issues at stake.

The underlying objective of the programme is to build the capacity of NGOs in UNECE countries (with a strong focus on the EECCA region) to assist them in monitoring their national governments on CSD performance. The programme also supports NGOs in developing strategies to translate the content of the CSD cluster issues into relevant programmes for their constituencies on national and local level. The purpose of such strategies would be to help NGOs monitor their country’s progress in developing and implementing relevant national and regional policy frameworks and programmes (e.g. 10 Year Framework) in dialogue with government and other stakeholders.

As part of the programme 5 (sub) regional workshops are organised for the UNECE region (minus North America): West Europe (EU + Norway, Switzerland, Iceland & Liechtenstein), Central Asia, Caucasus, South Eastern Europe, Russia/Ukraine.

Although the workshops focus on current CSD issues it is the intention to establish a long term commitment and involvement from within the NGO constituency with CSD.