Participants & Projects Involved (IWL co-finance: 40%, but actually less than that as all projects self-funded)

• Black Sea: Yegor Volovik
• Caspian Sea: Hamid Ghaffarzadeh, Melina Seyfollahzadeh, Ardalan Sotudeh
• Kura-Aras River: Mary Matthews
• REC: Magda Toth Nagy
• Red Sea and Gulf of Aden: Khulood Tubaishat
• South Pacific Regional Environmental Program: Ritia Bakineti (Kiribati), Deyna Marsh (Cook Islands), Steve Menzies (SPREP), Leah Nimoho (Vanuatu)
• UNDP: Vladimir Mamaev, Juerg Staudenmann

Host Institution

• Danube Regional Project (hosted by International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR))
• Jasmine Bachman (ICPDR), Paul Csagoly (project), Kari Eik (project), Tony Hare (consultant), Sylvia Koch (project)

Introduction, Purpose: Why an Exchange

Around the globe many International Waters Projects are attempting to influence human behaviour in order to protect shared natural resources. These projects are attempting to:

• raise public awareness of resource management problems;
• promote public participation in decision-making, and;
• minimize the harmful impacts of specific human behaviours.

Communications can provide effective tools to:

• promote voluntary behaviour change within target audiences and;
• help build public support for the introduction of new rules and regulations to protect shared resources.

Unfortunately there is often there is a poor understanding of how communications activities can help to achieve realistic and measurable outcomes, whether it is a change in awareness, attitudes, behaviours, or a change in specific environmental indicators.

Despite these common objectives and barriers there are currently no clear guidelines, resources, or tools to help communications practitioners in IW projects to improve the effectiveness of their communications programmes and activities.

The purpose of this proposal is to find a cost-effective way to bring together existing examples of best-practice and case studies to show how communications activities can be used to:

• raise awareness of how our projects are attempting to address key environmental and resource management issues;
• promote greater public ownership of these problems and their solutions;
• promote voluntary behaviour change and/or public support for the adoption of new rules and regulations where this is required
• achieve measurable changes in awareness, attitudes, behaviours and environmental indicators.

The purpose of the proposed stakeholder exchange is to bring together a core group of communications practitioners with a vested interest in improving the effectiveness of their own project communications programmes.

Learning Objectives

The objective of this proposal is to develop a web-based Resource Kit that will provide planning tools and case-studies to assist communications practitioners in all IW projects to improve the effectiveness of their:

• Communications Strategies
• Audience Research Programmes
• Media and Public Outreach Programmes
• Social Marketing (Behaviour Change & Advocacy) Campaigns
• Monitoring & Evaluation Programmes

Outputs/Outcomes

• Communications Planning Guide (download), Link to editable "living version"
• Link to site for Vienna Communication Workshop hosted by UNDP-RBEC Bratislava's WaterWiki
• Mission Reports: Steve Menzies, Ritia Bakineti, Deyna Marsh and Leah Nimoho

Related content

ICPDR Response: Communication, Public Participation and Outreach Activities

A Communications Planning Guide for International Waters Projects

Resources for sustaining ICPDR activities: resource needs, sources, actions

Communicating for Results: A Communications Planning Guide for International Waters Projects

Danube Ministerial Declaration

Developing the Danube River Basin Pollution Reduction Programme RER/96/G31 :Terminal Evaluation (1999)

On the Beautiful, Blue, Cleaner Danube