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Baltic Environment and Energy, BEE (BEE)
Start date: Feb 14, 2006, End date: Dec 30, 2007 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The BEE project has been financed according to measure 3.2 of the Interreg programme (Bilateral maritime cooperation across the Baltic Sea). BEE has focused on the lack of sustainable education methods and practises of friendly environmental attitudes, as well as on how to develop methods for good management and capacity building for handling environmental and energy issues. The objective of the project has hereby been to create an interest network with representatives from different sectors in Kaliningrad Region and South Sweden. Other objectives have been to turn the focus of cooperation from traditional aid to equal partnership, and to spread knowledge on how to engage in and work with projects in order to take care of the results for capacity building in the own organisation’s ordinary line-activities and development work.The project has been developed in cooperation with the RED project, and has to a great extent been implemented jointly with this project.The project partners have been regional and local authorities from the participating regions – South Sweden and the Kaliningrad Region of the Russian Federation. Main target groups have been representatives on the local and regional level of the public sector – politicians/civil servants working with environment and energy matters, and actors from the educational sector, mainly teachers.The project has been implemented within four work packages, of which the first one has had its focus on how to achieve added value in the different organisations engaging themselves in project work and how to develop good management and involvement in environmental and energy matters. This WP has been implemented in close cooperation with the RED project.WP 2 has had its focus on the current situation in Sweden and Russia (Kaliningrad Region) in the environmental and energy fields. Mapping and comparison between SE and RU has been carried out concerning some essential parts of mainly the environmental field about rules, division of responsibilities, organisations and resources. This will give the opportunity to take new ideas and approaches into consideration in order to establish a sustainable common future strategy and methodology for the regions concerning mainly education within the environment and energy fields (WP 3). In WP 4 a strategy has been developed for further long-term bilateral cooperation between Kaliningrad Region and South Sweden.The main project methods have been mapping and analyses, reports, international meetings, workshops, seminars, discussions and study visits, adjusted to each WP according to each specific objective. Also a series of local meetings and preparations have been carried out. Achievements: The project has definitely had most impact on the Russian side. The Russian partners have started to build up inter-sectoral cooperation in some municipalities within the environmental field according to an “Arena model” presented in one of the project reports – in order to develop actions in municipalities and schools with the idea to create a true environmental culture in the society. An analysis made within the project of the Russian Federal environmental legislation (also a project report presented in the Tacis part of the project) has exposed that there is good space for municipalities to act within the environmental field – the problem is lack of resources and expert knowledge in the municipalities. Concerning environmental education, the Russian partners have developed new, more practice-oriented and holistic curricula that now will be tested in some of the schools in the Kaliningrad Oblast.Impact on the Swedish side have been about spreading of the Arena model to some of the Swedish partners, better understanding of driving forces behind the development of the Swedish environmental policies over time - and perhaps most important – much better understanding of prerequisites of working and understanding in international projects: the importance of understanding cultural differences, ways of thinking in different cultures, the different interpretations of terms and expressions, and not the least the general problems of language barriers.The main concrete outputs of the project are a series of written reports, a strategy for further cooperation between partners in the Kaliningrad Region and south-east Sweden, a website about the project and its results, and a number of seminars mainly on the Russian side leading to e.g. new curricula for environmental education and to environmental actions in municipalities.Some of the results, especially the Arena Model, are judged to be of general interest for the whole BSR area and even in a wider international context.
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  • 26.7%   206 141,00
  • 2000 - 2006 Baltic Sea Region
  • Project on KEEP Platform
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11 Partners Participants