Macedonian’s GHG reduction potential – Chances for less polluted air

EUEnlarge Newsletter
October 2008 issue

Protecting the environment is fundamental for the quality of life of current and future generations. One of the greatest concerns of the European Union (EU) are combating climate change, protecting biodiversity, reducing the impact of pollution on health and better use of natural resources. Climate change has emerged as one of the most important issues facing not only the EU but the whole humanity in the 21st century. The main cause of climate change is increased concentrations of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mostly due to human activities.
Macedonia’s economy is characterized by comparatively high level of energy consumption and GHG emissions per unit of GDP are one of the highest among Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. (Source: World Resources Institute 2006). According to the baseline scenario, in comparison to the GHG emissions in 1990 (15.511, 80 kt CO2-eq), the projected emissions will rise by 17 % in 2012 (18.136, 00 kt CO2-eq), and by 28 % in 2020 (19.851, 00 kt CO2-eq). (Source: Answers to the European Commission’s Questionnaire; Chapter 22 Environment). The question arises, how can Macedonia achieve GHG reductions?

Quick facts

GHG emissions by gas in the Republic of Macedonia in 2007 (Source: Yearly Report about the Quality the Environment, 2007; Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of the Republic of Macedonia)
CO 180 kt
SO2 140, 8 kt
NOx 46, 03 kt
TSP 30,823 kt

Current situation

The values for 2012 emissions are based on the emission decrease study prepared as part of the First National Communication of the Republic of Macedonia under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. According to the study (which was made on the following sectors: electricity production, heat production, transport, industry, waste, agriculture and forest), the energy sector of Macedonia contributes with approximately 70% of the total country’s GHG emissions, thus being the sector with largest share in GHG emissions.

Challenging conditions

The recommendations by experts are as follows:
• Rehabilitation of large power plants;
• Fuel Switching to Natural Gas;
• Industrial Efficiency Improvements;
• Hydro Power
• Geothermal Energy.

Relatively higher abatement potential in Macedonia compared to other CEE countries also steams from the fact that Macedonia’s energy sector is heavily reliant on coal and lignite-based thermal power. Thus, any project measures replacing grid-based electricity in Macedonia are likely to lead to high emission reductions and therefore would be more attractive from Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM).
One of the primary goal of CDM is to assist Annex I countries in reaching their emissions reduction targets. This goal allows developed countries to achieve part of their GHG reduction obligations through projects in developing countries or countries in transition that reduce GHG emissions through promotion of renewable energy, energy efficiency, improvement of waste management, reforestation/a forestation and other GHG mitigation/sequestration activities. (Source: National Strategy for Clean Development Mechanism for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol 2008-2012).
The Department of Energy and Mineral Resources from the Ministry of Economy, is in charge of national energy sector policies, including energy efficiency, power sector reform, renewable energy development and is therefore well-positioned to facilitate identification of CDM projects in Macedonia’s energy sector.
Non-governmental organizations influence government actions by providing information and advice, making policy recommendation and sometimes by direct lobbying. Only with a synchronized action of all governmental, civil and economical subjects in reducing the emissions of GHG will lead to reduced global warming and a cleaner environment.

The One Stop Shop System in Macedonia

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September 2008 Edition


The process of introducing the One-Stop-Shop system in Macedonia was an initiative derived from the recommendations of the European Commission, regarding the obstacles in trade economy and fulfillment of the criteria and achievement of the standards set for the business environment.
The program has been supported by international donors such as: IMF, EAR, USAID, World Bank, FIAS, UNDP

Why One-Stop-Shop?

Macedonia is facing a low economic growth; it remains on the last place compared to the other countries in the region regarding the foreign direct investments. As a result of this fact, all governments that Macedonia had until now, have set the attraction of foreign investments as their priority goal, as an important stimulation for the economic progress of the country.
In order to attract foreign investments, Macedonia has introduced the One-Stop-Shop system. This system has also been introduced by many European public administrations. It has a service-offering character and serves as an interface between the citizens and the public administration.

Business reforms in Macedonia

Areas of Reform: Starting a Business, Registering Property, Getting Credit (Information), Paying Taxes, Trading Across Borders, Enforcing Contracts.

Doing Business 2009, rank: 71 (Source: Doing Business 2009, annual report comparing business regulations)

Facilities provided by the One-Stop-Shop system

Macedonia implemented the One-Stop-Shop system on January 1st, 2006. The One-Stop-Shop offers a certain number of facilities for the investors mainly resulting in reducing administrative barriers and start-up costs.
Its main objective is to reduce the number of days for setting a new business (used to be 48 days and after introducing the system, it was reduced to 5 days) and to improve the overall business climate in Macedonia. The system is designed to be simple, fast and most important - less expensive. It operates within the Central Register via 32 electronically integrated offices located throughout the country. The system offers business registration in four hours, in a single office and getting all information in one place.
Recently World Bank published the latest Doing Business report. The report mentions that Macedonia has updated the One-Stop-Shop system in order to carry out the full range of business start-up processes, to reduce both the number of procedures and the time required. The report also states that the time required to export has been reduced from 19 to 17 days and the time to import from 17 to 15 days, as a result of the rationalization of the customs fee schedule and permit structure, improved risk-based inspections, simplification of a customs procedure, and elimination of a document requirement.
Although, the One-Stop-Shop system in a certain level has influenced the business climate, having in mind the current index of the foreign direct investments its implementation advantages are yet to come!

Beyond Blogging: Macedonia: Exploring new media

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July 2008 Edition

Beyond Blogging:
Macedonia: Exploring new media

For a while now, the world is faced with “blogging fever” a new media revolution reflecting the hunger for fresh and nontraditionally served information. Following the email and webpage, the blog has become original tool for communication aspiring to maintain stronger relationship and loyalty with the consumers. By starting up numerous individual blogs, blog platforms and blog-related activities Macedonia has shyly joined the global blogosphere. But is Macedonian blogging community strong enough to handle the mainstream media impact? Will it make “blogging” not just a modern and quite cheap but also a powerful medium? And finally, can we rely on the information on blogs?

Mapping Macedonian Blogosphere

QUICK FACTS:
First Macedonian Blog launched: 2001
The most popular blog platform: Blogeraj http://blog.com.mk/
The estimated number of active Macedonian Blogs: 20 000
The estimated number of daily visitors of the most popular blogs: 100-200
Some interesting Macedonian Blogs: bukarski.blog.com.mk, femgerila.blog.com.mk,
arheo.com.mk, kvadraturanakrug.blog.com.mk, qzevski.blog.com.mk, oksimoron.blog.com.mk, antipunkt.blogspot.com, vuna.info..

As probably elsewhere in the world, the number of blog users in Macedonian blogosphere is rapidly growing. The reason could be in the fact that blog-hosting services have made it easy to create a blog or perhaps the blog itself attracts new followers. Nevertheless, some data shows that the assumed number does not necessarily fit the actual status quo since very large portion of Macedonian blogs are not active and do not publish new posts regularly. Many have just opened accounts to test the service or to comment on others’ posts. Unofficially, today they are around 20,000 blogs (both individual and corporate) feeding Macedonian blogosphere. According to a survey conducted by New Media Center, 58.8% of Macedonian internet users have their own blogs. However, the picture looks like a mosaic of a few outstanding and a huge number of less-known blogs, each contributing in particular genre starting from an ordinary diaries, travel chronicles to technical advice columns and political commentary or as the same survey shows the most of them (35.8%) read 2-3 blogs daily. Still, in the last couple of years the Macedonian blogosphere has made significant development. Macedonian blogers joined the formal Association of Blogers of Macedonia and under their mentorship the first Youth Blog Training was conducted in June this year. Last year, New Media Center organized MK Blog conference where interesting topics related to progress of the network society were discussed while this year New York University Skopje hosted the Second International Conference Glocal 2.0: Blogging: Evolution treated as Revolution which gathered international group of researchers and practitioners (bloggers) for a discussion and analysis on the emerging networked society. These are only part of the activities initiated and organized by Macedonian bloggers. Maybe most interesting fact are Macedonian blogers themselves - writers, poets who published books whose content was already published on their blogs. (Bukarski, Kostadinova;“Izdanie –Blog zapisi” etc.)

Avoiding the trap: Is it really credible source of information!?
While skeptics question the credibility of information posted due to the absence of any quality control mechanisms, the usual answers given by Macedonian blogers is that the true quality debate starts exactly after posting the opinion which is not case in traditional media where the information is simply served and hardly unbiased. Blogs are exactly about “keeping the finger on the pulse” - feeling what are the readers reactions to certain ideas, stories. This gives them a freedom to choose what to believe in. That is how, despite the above mentioned constraints, the blog appears to play a very important role in public debate sphere. Besides, internet users prefer blogs also because they keep them updated with the latest trends, they are interesting and fun and mostly because of the obvious biases.
After all, easy to start, sometimes hard to maintain, blogs remains the most dynamic, inconsistent but still very promising source of fresh, objective and challenging information and equal opportunities space. Macedonia has accepted the challenge and became part of the global blogging community, of course, putting on it its own original mark.

Sources “Short History of Macedonian Blogosphere” byF.Stojanovski.
New media Center on line Survey presented at Glocal 2.0: Blogging: Evolution treated as Revolution