The purpose of NDEP is to mobilise grant funding for environmental and nuclear safety investments in the Northern Dimension Area for concrete projects prepared by the IFIs. The grants are allocated from the NDEP Support Fund which pools significant contributions from partner governments.
For environmental projects, NDEP grants are meant to complement the loan funding from IFIs and help to leverage extra local and international resources. The grants offer an extra incentive for environmental projects that may not be otherwise financially viable and unable to achieve satisfactory environmental targest without that extra help.
For nuclear safety projects, NDEP grants are designed to fully cover the investment costs. Nuclear projects are developed in close cooperation with the Russian authorities and Russian and international experts. For this purpose, the NDEP Support Fund has a special nuclear “window”.
The NDEP works to benefit the entire Northern Dimension Area, which – as defined by the EU policy - covers the north-west of Europe from the Arctic and Sub-Arctic areas including the Barents and White Seas to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. It includes all the countries in its vicinity from north-west Russia in the east to Iceland in the west.
The NDEP projects aim to improve the ecology of the Baltic, White and Barents Seas region. So far the NDEP has been focused on projects in the north-west Russia . However in 2009, the NDEP welcomed Belarus into the Fund and a new project pipeline is now under development to rehabilitate, in the first instance, its inefficient wastewater treatment facilities. These invesments will have significant cross border benefits for the Baltic Sea.
The NDEP stems from the early Environment for Europe process and the European Union’s Northern Dimension initiative, developed in late 1990s aiming to enhance international co-operation to increase prosperity, strengthen security and combat dangers such as environmental pollution and nuclear safety risks in the Northern Dimension Area.
From the start, it was recognised that the international financial institutions (IFIs) would have a key role to prepare a project pipeline for launching the new Partnership. As a result of the EU Summit in Gothenburg in 2001, the concept of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP) was endorsed and a Steering Group - comprising the EBRD, EIB, NIB, the World Bank, the European Commission and Russia - was established.
At its first meeting in Stockholm in September 2001, the Group agreed on a pipeline of 12 environmental priority projects in water, wastewater, solid waste and energy efficiency in the north-west Russia. The Steering Group also worked on devising a strategic approach to financing nuclear safety projects. The EBRD took the lead and established a set of principles and a programme of potential projects, building on the extensive experience of the Contact Expert Group of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). All work was carried out in close co-operation with Russian authorities, including the Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom).
In January 2002, the Rules of the NDEP Support Fund were agreed by the Board of Directors of the EBRD, which is in charge of administering the Fund. The NDEP Support Fund became fully operational in 2002, once the pledging conference secured the necessary initial contributions totalling €100 million. The Assembly of Contributors, grouping all contributors to the Fund, held its first meeting on 15 November 2002 to approve the framework of the Fund and to decide on the first allocations for specific projects.
The work of NDEP was further endorsed when in November 2006 the European Union, Russia, Iceland and Norway adopted the new
Northern Dimension Policy Framework and Political Declaration
for a permanent Northern Dimension policy. The documents favour NDEP as an effective model of cooperation for environmental investment.
The NDEP Support Fund is now set to run till November 2017 to allow sufficient time to project implementation in both the environmental and nuclear safety windows. This would be beneficial to Belarus which joined the Fund in 2009. A new project pipeline to improve the wastewater treatment in Vitebsk, Grodno, Brest, Slonim and Baranoviche is currently being developed by the IFIs.
The main innovative feature of NDEP is its ability to bring together various partners and initiatives to make it easier to raise funds for priority projects to benefit the environment of the Northern Dimension Area. The NDEP so far has received significant contributions from the European Commission and 12 donor governments including Russia and Belarus.
The NDEP pools, for the first time, the collective expertise and resources of the IFIs active in the region: EBRD, EIB, NIB, NEFCO and the World Bank. Each project has an assigned IFI acting as Lead Implementing Agency which looks after a project from start to finish. Through its expertise the IFIs can identify and develop new projects, which once approved by the NDEP contributors, follow a well-planned and transparent implementation programme including procurement rules of the lead IFI.
The NDEP works in conjunction with other environmental initiatives in the region. For the Baltic Sea, the NDEP cooperates with with HELCOM and its Baltic Sea Action Plan aiming to eliminate the remaining hot spots that have cross-border effects. NDEP follows closely the activities of the Northern Dimension initiative started in 2006 by the European Commission, Russia, Norway and Iceland and complements the new EU Baltic Sea Strategy. For the Barents Sea, the NDEP works together with the Barents Euro-Arctic Council.
The NDEP and its nuclear window is rapidly becoming a major multilateral initiative in dealing with the issue of nuclear waste management in north-west Russia. Its focus is on the Kola Peninsula, Archangelsk and Murmansk regions which constitute the largest repository of nuclear waste in the world. The NDEP carries forward the work done by the Contact Expert Group of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Established in 1996, the Contact Expert Group is an international specialist forum for consultation on principles and practice for nuclear waste management in Russia.
From the start, it was recognised that the international financial institutions (IFIs) would have a key role to prepare a project pipeline for launching the new Partnership. As a result of the