Representatives of the Environmental Protection Fund of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) signed the Agreement on co-financing of the project “Green Economic Development”, amounting to 3.78 million BAM.
Resident Representative of UNDP in BiH Yuri Afanasiev said that this cooperation was planned before the floods hit BiH BiH but that after that, together with representatives of the Fund and the FBiH Prime Minister Nermin Nikšić they agreed that part of the funds planned for cooperation get redirected to rehabilitate the consequences of floods.
“The original goal of the cooperation was focused on activities in the field of energy efficiency and green economic development, but after the floods we have selected nine buildings in three cantons that will be renewed so that they will be even better than they were before the devastation, and most of them are educational institutions,” said Afanasiev.
Afanasiev thanked the EU, which has provided a significant portion of the funds, as well as the Director of the Environmental Protection Fund of FBiH Safet Harbinja on cooperation, for which he said it could serve as an example to other institutions.
Harbinja said that for three years now since they have cooperated with UNDP, thanks to which they have established a database which at the end of the year will contain 550 buildings.
“This year we decided to focus our activities on the flooded areas so that in the future we would have facilities that will consume less energy and therefore demand less budget fund,” said Harbinja.
He thanked Afanasiev and his team, which was on the ground and has made a large contribution to the preparation of the project documentation and assessment of the damage.
The UNDP and the European Union secured 2.32 million BAM for rehabilitation of these nine buildings and the FBiH Environmental Protection Fund secured 1.55 million BAM.
(Source: Fena)
