At the ethno village Stanisic, near Bijeljina, on March 29th 2013. the first workshop was held as part of the project “Wise use of common natural resources – road to sustainability of the Serbia/BiH cross-border region”. This project is implemented by the Union of Ecologists UNECO from Belgrade and Center for Environmentally Sustainable Development (CESD) from Sarajevo. Among the hundreds of attendees, there were included representatives from the six municipalities covered by the project (Bratunac, Ljubovija, Zvornik, Mali Zvornik, Bijeljina and Bogatic), representatives of NGO-s, students from the Faculty for Applied Ecology Futura, etc…
Head of the spatial organization of the town of Bijeljina, Igor Ostojic, welcomed the guests on behalf of the host of the first workshop and expressed his satisfaction that city of Bijeljina is able to participate in this project. The workshop was followed by the presentation of project implementations organizations – Tarik Kupusovic spoke about the Center for Environmentally Sustainable Development (CESD), and Jordan Aleksic spoke about Union of Ecologists. Project Manager, Mirjana Bartula, briefly presented the objectives achieved so far and the envisaged activities, as well as project partners. This was followed by presentations on the state of the environment by the representatives of the six municipalities. Session after lunch started with the presentation of working groups involving representatives of each of the partner municipalities. The purpose of these working groups will be the creation of the Action Plan of natural resources in the border region through intensive teamwork and expert training they will go in future workshops during the project.
