Our Solutions

Umjetno Grabovicko jezero (Sliv Neretve), Bosna i Hercegovina
© WWF-Canon / Michel GUNTHER

Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed its commitment to become member of EU family. On the road to become one of EU member states, BiH needs to fulfill a number of prerequisites, some of those belonging to the environmental sector. WWF supports the use of environmental EU legislation, being the Habitat and Water Framework Directives very advanced tools to implement natural resource conservation in an equitable manner.

The Living Neretva project began in October 2006. It will support the governments of both entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska) to manage the natural resources of the transboundary Neretva river basin according to the founding EU Habitat and Water Framework Directives’ principles and criteria.

The overall goal / vision of the project is to ensure nature conservation and sustainable development of the Neretva river basin area, serving as a base for long-term prosperity and development in the region.

The immediate goal of the project is to facilitate the development of an integrated river basin management model for the Neretva river basin, linking water management and biodiversity conservation.

Specific project objectives aiming to achieve project goal are the following:

Set the ground for mapping biodiversity values and hotspots in the Neretva basin in accordance to the Habitat Directive principles.
Initiate a multi-stakeholder process for integrated river management in accordance to Water Framework Directive principles.
Strengthening civil society, to ensure proper public participation in river management and support democratic development.

The project is designed to be used as instrumental in moving the first steps for the identification of biodiversity hotspots (for implementation of the Natura 2000 network of the Habitat Directive, once being obligatory for BiH) in the entire Neretva basin and it will foster a dialogue among stakeholders as well as public participation (article 14 of the WFD) with the long term goal of solving the conflicts among water users and agree on Neretva river environmental flow.

At this purpose three working groups have been created to analyze the best possible path, nested in the local context, towards:

the identification of biodiversity hotspot in the pilot are of Neretva basin
the applicability of "environmental flow" as a tool to reach sustainable management of water resources in Neretva river
the economic evaluation of natural resources of Neretva basin.

In parallel other activities are being implemented to involve the civil society in nature conservation and promote the importance of Neretva basin. For example, summer camps gathering different schools from the basin are raising children awareness on the natural wealth of the area.

The project is focused on Bosnia and Herzegovina territory and its first phase started in October 2006 and will be over end of 2007. A second phase, building up of the results of the first phase, is foreseen.

The funding agency is the Norwegian government and the implementer is WWF Mediterranean Programme in collaboration with WWF Norway.