About the Project

Sustainable Development in the Crimea (2006 - 2008)

Ecologists Connect The Future Of The Crimea With The Sustainable Development

The Crimean Republican Association "Ekologija I Mir" (CRAEM) in association with the Holland Fund of NOVIB has started to implement its new project "Sustainable Development For The Crimea".

In the course of the forthcoming three-year work upon the project the ecologists will introduce ideas of the sustainable development into the masses.

The sustainable development involves the solution of socioeconomic problems keeping wild nature and natural resources in a state of preservation for the present and future generations. Broad experience acquired by the ecologists within the last years of working in various fields (such as power engineering, ecology, biosciences, probing of the quality of water, territorial planning, etc.) has become a precondition for working out of this project.

Viktor Tarasenko, the chairman of the CRAEM, points out to a solid foundation of the sustainable development of the Crimea laid in the past decade. All materials collected by the Crimean ecologists and scientists during this period were included into a series of books devoted to the sustainable development: "Sustainable Development: Plan of Actions", "Simferopol - the Southern Capital", "The Energetic Strategy of XXI", "Water Resources", "Socioecological Movement of the Crimea". They describe the most various approaches to the realization of the ideas of the sustainable development.

Andrej Artov, the coordinator of the project, believes since there is no control of the society and balanced decisions, a definite stereotype that could be called "the economic future of the Crimea depends on the development of transit ways" starts to form. He has also pointed out to the fact that the authorities treat the Crimean peninsula as an intermediate station on a transit way. However the Crimea is a cultural, historic and ecological center. Its future depends on the preservation of recreational resources and sustainable development of resorts.

The project "Sustainable Development For The Crimea" will give special attention to the following target regions: the Simferopolskij region, the Leninskij region, the Dzankojskij region and the South-West Crimea.

As long as the project goes, the association "Ekologija I Mir" aspires to reach the following key results:
• This spring four open civic centers (OCC) are to begin their operations on the basis of local departments of the CRAEM. Their main objective will be to provide information, consultations in socioecological matters and support of civic activity in appropriate regions of the Crimea. The workers from the OCC will inform the population about decisions that have been made or are supposed to be made by the authorities in matters of natural resources consume, regional development, human rights including ecological ones.
• In the future, on the basis of three village societies the plans of the sustainable development will be worked out and groups of initiative citizens responsible for the implementation of these plans will be organized.
• To supply people with objective information about the environmental condition and health on regional and local levels, the experts from the CRAEM will carry out independent probing of the quality of water, air, soil, food and hold an account of health condition of the population.

Even today, within the bounds of the project, the Crimean Association "Ekologija I Mir" takes up the monitoring of decisions made by the authorities to provide control of the population. The ecologists will also draw their attention to plans of decisions that deal with natural resources of the Crimea, the allocation of investments (including the calculation and expending of funds) and the regional development.

On the whole the ecologists expect that due to the project the public influence on the development of the Crimea will increase, the sustainable development on local levels will be practically realized, a more moral attitude towards the nature and cultural heritage of the peninsula will be formed.