Flagship Projects: Environment and Climate Change
Strategic Environmental Assessment in Turkey
The EU-funded €1 million project titled "Implementation of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive" supported the preparation of SEA reports in four sectors in line with EU standards. Through the project, a thorough revision of the draft by-law on Strategic Environmental Assessment has been carried out to bring it in line with EU norms. In addition, the project has increased the awareness of environmental impact assessments at all levels and provided training for Turkish experts.
Protecting Nature in Turkey at EU standards
The EU-funded €7 million project aims to protect and enhance Turkey’s natural habitats and biodiversity in line with EU nature directives, i.e. the Birds and Habitats Directives in particular. Through the project, the institutional and technical capacity to select and design the NATURA 2000 Network in Turkey will be strengthened through a series of trainings, workshops, and study visits and a considerable amount of fieldwork.
The project pilot area is the Central Anatolia Region, which has a wide variety of different species and habitats, most of them endemic to Turkey. The project will assess the data gaps with a view to complete missing information, as well as training staff from both the central and local branches of the Ministry as well as involving other stakeholders, including civil society and universities.
Capacity-Building in the Field of Climate Change in Turkey
This project is made up 4 Technical Assistance Contracts and a grants programme with a total budget of €15.5 million. The components of the project, which will be initiated in early 2017, aim to support Turkey on reducing existing gaps which hinder ambitious climate action. The project will address the following crucial elements:
- Developing the analytical basis for formulating strategies and actions towards low carbon development: Within this component, mitigation scenarios and options will be developed based on greenhouse gas projections. This analytical study will be used to identify cost-effective mitigation measures in different sectors.
- Developing the analytical basis for the land-use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector: This component will address the challenges of the LULUCF sector by enhancing specific expertise required for estimating and reporting GHG emissions and removals from the land use and forestry sectors.
- Increasing the capacity for transposition and capacity-building on F-gases: This component will support Turkey on eliminating F-gases – one of the greenhouse gases – by the production sector via fortifying the capacity and legislative framework.
- Increasing public understanding and enhanced stakeholder capacity: This component aim to reach the public to increase their awareness of the sources and impacts of climate change to enhance individual and societal-level climate action.
- Climate change grants programme: This programme will provide financing to climate action by local authorities and grassroots organizations.