Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN) was established by environmental NGOs of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia on a volunteer basis. As a grass-roots organization, CENN focuses its approaches directly on those who are using the resources and would benefit most from interventions to better manage them. To gain an understanding of the issues, CENN initially reconnoitered areas within the three countries, organized stakeholder meetings to gain a more in-depth understanding of these issues, and began to build local capability to identify and manage them. CENN then implemented its region-wide public environmental awareness raising campaigns through collection of information from the very grassroots level of stakeholders, informing the local society about the issues, and mobilizing the community around the water concerns. CENN's advocacy work in this case included an information hotline, a book identifying concerns, free Internet service, an environmental library, and public service announcements on radio and television. CENN used rapid rural assessment, worked with the local people to institute voluntary public river monitoring for water quality, produced a local and regional newsletter, and organized regional roundtables in mobilizing the communities. As a key part of this activity, CENN established Public Environmental Information Centers, which are repositories of all local water resource information and act as a local gathering place to discuss these issues. The main crosscutting areas in which they are working are democracy, governance and environment. However, their work is likely to also impact economic growth and energy, health, and even agriculture and food security.
The aims of CENN are:
- Capacity building of environmental NGOs in the region
- Facilitation and promotion of joint activities in the Caucasus
- Iimprovement of the effectiveness of solutions of environmental problems
- Establishment and maintenance of easily accessible environmental information space
- Coordination of efforts in the development of compatible environmental strategies and policies in Caucasus countries
In order to achieve these goals, CENN works in the following directions:
- Increase of information exchange between NGOs, governments, international organizations and the general public in the field of environmental protection in the Caucasus
- Improvement of communication and search for ways for efficient collaboration
- Iimprovement of environmental awareness in the region through various publications
- Support of organizations enrolled in the Network through regional seminars, workshops, training, and other activities
- Implementation of purposeful lobbying on various environmental issues in the region
- Preparation and execution of joint projects
In 2003, CENN began creation of databases on nature resources of the South Caucasus region, including water resources, to collect, consolidate and categorize environmental information existing in the region and develop easily accessible and flexible database that can be uploaded on the CENN web page.
water.cenn.org/ and www.cenn.org
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