Interreg: NATREG – Training courses and knowledge management

The Interreg project “Natreg – Managing Natural Assets and Protected Areas as Sustainable Regional Development Opportunities”, which was concluded in 2011, involved 11 partners from Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia and Serbia working together to jointly develop routes towards sustainable regional development which would take account of the goals of nature conservation. The setting up of a transnational and multi-sectoral cooperative network enabled the creation of a joint strategy for integrated management of protected areas in the Alps-Adriatic-Pannonia region. In this the important topics for cross-border cooperation were management and business plans for protected areas, ecological corridors, evaluation of the performances of ecosystems and citizen participation. As well as important collaboration on these topics, E.C.O. was mainly responsible for identifying joint training objectives (training needs assessment), preparing training documentation (including the publication People, Parks and Money) and running interactive training courses for project partners in Klagenfurt.