TDA/NCAP/SAP Process

• CEP made the conscious and early decision in development of the TDA, NAPs and SAP to stress equal importance to process and the final products themselves.

• Country involvement, dialogue and commitment were set as paramount goals.

• The final products were truly collaborative efforts, during two and a half years the following meetings were held:

- Thirty thematic meetings (biodiversity, ICZM, fisheries, emergency response, etc)

- Five major TDA workshops

- Fifteen NAP workshops/consultation meetings (three per country)

- Two major SAP workshops

TDA Barriers

• Fixed perceptions

• Information rich, data poor

• A wealth of anecdotal evidence – a hundred anecdotes are no better than one

• Institutes with vested interests in promoting a bleak picture

• No national prioritization of the problems and little knowledge of wider stakeholder concerns

NAPs vs SAP

What should be developed first, the National Action Plans or the Regional Strategic Action Programme?

Developing NAPs first:

• Enables countries to prioritize national and regional (transboundary) issues together.

• Countries are forced to enter into meaningful inter-sectoral dialogue and address the key question of resource mobilization at an early stage.

• Countries can commit to and endorse a NAP at the highest level and in doing take the first step towards collective stewardship of the environment.

• In reviewing each other’s NAPs countries are better able to prioritize regional issues and thereby produce a more focused SAP.

NAP vs SAP

Developing the SAP first:

• Gives priority to regional problems over national problems, and lays unfair and untenable claims to limited resources.

• With more than two or three countries Government endorsement of a SAP is difficult, if not impossible. SAP documents are often adopted at solely at the Ministry level and do not go through an inter-sectoral consultation procedure.

• If not supported by NAPs there is no true commitment to the SAP and retro-fitting seldom works.

National issues Regional issues

Regional issues National issues

Combining the NAP commitments to create a SAP

SAP

Tools for SAP prioritization

• The causal chain analysis is an excellent tool to show how an issue should be addressed, step-by-step, bottom-up and to help determine and shape required interventions.

• Environmental Quality Objectives helps to develop a broad stakeholder agreement on the priority regional environment issues and once agreed allows quantifiable targets to be set to meet those objectives. From there it is a relatively step to define interventions. A top-down approach.

• In drafting the Caspian SAP both tools were used, first CCA and then EQOs, with a final analysis of interventions to ensure the common and specific root causes had been addressed