Nature Conservation 1/2009 — 20. 2. 2009 — Nature and Landscape Management — Print article in pdf
Operational Programme "Environment"
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The Operational Programme “Environment” (OPE) for the period 2007–2013 is funded...
The Operational Programme “Environment” (OPE) for the period 2007–2013 is funded from the European Community’s budget, totalling 4.92 billion euros, and co-financed from national sources. It supports various building and non-building environmental measures. The OPE includes six priority areas (so-called axes) according to various environmental topics. Nature conservation and landscape protection measures have been supported from the Priority Area No. 6 which is divided into six sub-areas: the Natura 2000 network management, support to biological diversity, landscape element restoration in the landscape, support to greenery restoration in the urbanized landscape, harmonizing water regime in the landscape, measures preventing and eliminating landslides and consequences of mining and non-renewable natural resource assessment. The financial support is available for almost everybody, with the exception of the cases if there is an overlap with some other subsidy programmes (most often with the national Rural Development Programme) or if the support is allocated for measures which under the current legislation can be implemented only by the particular applicants (e.g., conservation of Natura 2000 sites). The Agency for Nature Conservation and Landscape Protection of the Czech Republic (ANCLP CR) has been involved in the OPE implementation since 2007. At present, its Regional Offices significantly contribute to administrating the programme, application assessment, checking the measures and raising awareness of the OPE as an important financial tool in nature and landscape management. Up to now, two calls for the Priority Area No. 6 have been open: 1,444 applications have been received. The ANCLP CR itself can apply for the support from the OPE. Therefore, it submitted five projects. During both the calls, comments for improving the OPE implementation were collected and most of them have been reflected in the obligatory documents for next calls. The ANCLP CR particularly aims at improving the communication with applicants to have high-quality projects.