February 5, 2020 | Read more Western Balkan countries are stuck in a loop of long, gloomy winters with extremely high air pollution. The number of times the air quality has exceeded the limit values over the last decade remains so high, that the very point of having those limit values is lost. In order to prevent episodes of air pollution that often reach values that are more than ten times above this limit, and to provide at least some level of protection for human health, additional urgent measures are required by the governments to supplement the long term strategies.
January 31, 2020 | Read more While both strategies nod towards climate change concerns and the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the NECP primarily aims towards a more advanced economy rather than a genuinely favourable state of the environment.
January 30, 2020 | Read more The Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development (HBOR) has recently started another court case against the decision of Croatia’s Information Commissioner before the High Administrative Court. In the contested decision, the Commissioner ordered HBOR to disclose information about its export credit projects to the environmental organization Green Istria. This court case adds to no fewer than 31 appeals that HBOR started against similar decisions by the Commissioner between 2015-2019. It lost all of them.
January 22, 2020 | Read more Serbia’s Ministry of Mining and Energy last week finally announced that its Regulation governing incentive measures for renewable energy and cogeneration is no longer in force.
January 20, 2020 | Read more “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” is an adage that decision-makers in the Western Balkans would do well to heed. This particularly applies to plans to bring online new coal power plants and the legal, economic and credibility risks these entail.
January 14, 2020 | Read more The Commission’s proposal for a Just Transition Fund is encouraging as fossil fuels have been excluded. Special attention should be given though to key elements such as its mode of governance, geographical scope, and the types of activities eligible for funding.
January 10, 2020 | Read more The 7.5 billion euros revealed today in a leak of the EU’s proposed Just Transition Mechanism can lead a sustainable and economically-fair move away from fossil fuels in Europe’s carbon-dependent regions, but only if local stakeholders are involved in planning the transformation and the funding is consistent with climate targets.
December 20, 2019 | Read more The European Investment Bank and German development bank KfW are among the lenders supporting a 41 kilometre extension of the road from Mombasa towards Nairobi, one of the most important in Kenya. Over the last four years, the resettlement of those along the transport corridor has created severe problems for residents of Mombasa’s suburbs.
December 13, 2019 | Read more At Thursday’s European Council meeting, Member States signed up to the bloc’s goal of becoming a net zero emitter of carbon by 2050, a commendable and essential step as the EU pursues the Paris Climate Agreement’s target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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