Communicating for the Danube Project Thank you very much. The presentation of the Danube will be done by 4 people, I will first give you an overview of the overall project communication issues, Paul from our project will then go through more the specific communication strategy related issues, focus on lessons learned and give some concrete examples of how our communication work are being implemented. In this context also Magdi will have a short presentation as REC is one of our main implemenation partneron how their work has been enhanced by focussing on Communication, and last but not least Jasmine from the ICPDR will have a presentation on their very successful communication tool the Danube Day. We hope in this way to give you an overview of our wide-range of communication work and to address some valuable lessons learned.

Regional social and economic disparities THE DANUBE RIVER BASIN the most international basin in the world 10% of Europe 81 Mio Inhabitants 18 Countries diverse cultures Particular situation of transition countries and the requirements for EU accession Regional social and economic disparities

GEF Danube Project (s) and communication 3 major projects since 1991 1)Focus on institutional development, ICPDR 2)Pollution Reduction Programme 3)Danube Regional Project (since 2001) AS Ivan mentioned earlier today, there has been a long history of Danube projects, starting in 1991 First focusing on building and supporting institutional development, establishing the ICPDR The second focused on the pollution and the reduction of this and now the 3 one if finally focusing on communication, at least this is the only project with a 50% budget for communication and public participation! We had of course also communication activities in the first projects, but this was mainly related to printing final reports and publishing the Danube Watch Magazine (that actually has followed us until today) and is now viewed by many as an excellent communication tool.

DANUBE REGIONAL PROJECT Overview of Project Components Strengthening the Implementation Capacities for Nutrient Reduction and Transboundary Cooperation in the Danube Basin Objective 1 Support for Policy Development Objective 2 Capacity Building & T-B Cooperation Objective 3 Public Participation & Awareness Objective 4 Monitoring and Evaluation of Projects RBM Tools (1.1) Inter-ministerial Mechanisms (2.1) NGO Institutional Development (3.1) Indicators for Project Monitoring&Evaluation (4.1) Agriculture - Policies (1.2) Monitoring, Laboratory & Info Management (2.2) NGO Small Grants Programme (3.2) Analysis of Sediments in the Iron Gate, impact assessment of heavy metals (4.2) Agriculture - Pilot Projects (1.3) Accident Emergency Response (2.3) Communication Strategy and Public Awareness Campaigns (3.3) Wetlands (1.4) Monitoring Nutrient Removal Capacities of Wetlands (4.3) The Project is implementing over 20 different project components, one of them is focused on Accident Emergency Response. Industry (1.5) DANUBIS (2.4) Public Participation and Access to Information (3.4) Water Tariffs (1.6) Study on Pollution Trading & Economic Instruments for Nutrient Reduction (4.4) (MoU) Danube-Black Sea Cooperation (2.5) Pollution Charges, Fines, Incentives (1.7) Trainings & Workshops (2.6) Phosphorus Reduction -Detergents (1.8)

Communication and awareness raising projects 1) Supporting NGOs (DEF network) 2) Providing Small Grants (130 projects) 3) Communicating with stakeholders 4) Access to information / public participation So this is just to show you the main communication and awareness raising components: We have 4 components designed to address these issues specifically, it is the support of the NGOs, more specifically the DEF, it is the small grants programme, it is a communication component that actually comprise all project objectives and it is the access to information/aarhus work,

SMALL GRANTS PROGRAMME Public awareness raising activities US$ 2 million Implemented by REC 120 National projects 10 Regional projects I will not go into detail on the NGO work, and the other two will be covered later in our presentations, but I just wanted to mention the small grants project. These are mainly awareness raising activities, implemented for us through REC, 2 million dollars for 120 National and ca 10 regional projects. These have been very valuable projects and major communciation efforts have been done here

Kosice (SK): Reedbed removal of nutrients from small rural settlements Small Grants Projects - examples Kosice (SK): Reedbed removal of nutrients from small rural settlements Informing Moldova, Romania and Ukraine citizens about trans-boundary issues in Prut basin and how they can participate Vukovar (HR): Promoting the reduction of pesticides among local farmers Sarajevo (BiH): 200,000 citizens informed about household detergents phosphorus and local water pollution Actually I just wanted to you to see a illutrative picture here, but you can also see some of our projects spread out over the basin. We have about 10 national projects in each country.

SMALL GRANTS PROGRAMME Example: Sarajevo, reduce use of detergents Information has been released to 200,000 citizens NGO activities on streets and shopping malls 20,000 leaflets distributed Every day broadcasts on local radio station reaching 150,000 people And this is one of the examples of a grant. The objective here was to raise local awareness and to reduce consumption of phosporus in household detergents contributing to water pollution. The results shows that - Information has been released to 200,000 citizens - NGO activities on streets and shopping malls - 20,000 leaflets distributed - 3300 broadcasts of radio jingle (10 days per day over 11 months) on local radio station reaching 150,000 people This is just one example, but you can imagine, if we have 120 projects like this, we communicate with a large number of people in the basin!!

Lessons learned overall implementation - Overall objective of the project - There still is a need to build communication work into technical components Implementation of project in partnership with other international bodies Selection of paths, what target audiences and communication tools should be selected Some initial lessons learned and Paul will come back to this more focussed on the communication strategy and the projects being implemented. I just want to give some first impressions of lessons learned in relation to the overall implementation. First of all since the objective of the project is very much on pp and communication, the focus is already there from the start. Still should be build in from the beginning into also other technical components of the project. And Paul will tell you more on how we are actually working to achieve this and the lessons learned in this connection. We have also many lessons to share on how a GEF project is working in partnership with other international bodies, in our case the ICPDR. In our case it has often been a challenge to focus the communication work and tools to cover the needs and benefits of both organisations, but also for the outside world to distinct the two bodies as well as to assure that the communication tools we are using are reaching our almost (but only almost) overlapping target audiences. I will now ask Paul to give you the presentation of the Danube projects communication work and our lessons learned so far.