Currently there is an increasing awareness of the urgent need to preserve and maintain the environment if we want to protect our planet. Aspects as important as sustainable management of natural resources, fighting climate change, and shifting consumption and production patterns towards more sustainable models, are at the top of our list of political priorities today.

Since 1974 the United Nations has been inviting us each 5th June to celebrate World Environment Day. This celebration gives us a magnificent opportunity to raise awareness on the responsibility that individuals, companies and governments alike have when it comes to protecting and improving our environment. The theme selected for reflection in 2017 centres on connecting people to nature, and it encourages us to appreciate its beauty and realise how much we depend on it.

FIIAPP, a public-sector foundation, has been working on environmental issues and doing its small part in this area for quite some time. Since 1998, FIIAPP has been working at the service of public administrations, improving the institutional framework and the functioning of public systems in the countries where we work, through experience exchange projects between administrations.

This is exemplified by the project implemented in Macedonia through a Twinning project to build capacities at a central and local level in order to comply with Community legislation on the environment, and which included the participation of the Council of Environmental Affairs of the Regional Government of Galicia (Spain).

On other occasions the focus is regional, as in the Euroclima+ project, an initiative of the European Union aimed at fighting climate change and promoting knowledge transfer and exchange with the public administrations of 18 Latin American countries.

Other examples of FIIAPP’s work include aspects as varied as the reduction of energy use in several cities in Jordan where Syrian refugees live, within the framework of the Qudra project; electrical and electronic waste management in Ukraine, in which the Community of Valencia is participating; integrated management of water resources in Morocco, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment (MAPAMA); and adaptation of Georgia to European directives on pollution and industrial risks.

By Javier Sota, senior project officer in FIIAPP’s Economic Development and Environment department

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