Social Impact, Public Participation and Gender Mainstreamingproject launched its Inception Workshop in Beijing on 6~7 August 2009.
More than 40 specialists from Australia and China attended, including program owners AusAID and MOFCOM; the four Chinese core partners NDRC, MEP, MWR, and SFA; the Program Coordination Office (PCO); international donors such as the World Bank (WB), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); Friends of Nature, NGO; representatives from the other ACEDP-supported projects including ‘Lake Tai Basin Water Resources Management and Pollution Control Project’, ‘Water Ecology Compensation Policy and Mechanism project’ and ‘River Health and Environmental Flow in China project’ along with a number of senior experts from Chinese environment institutions and universities.
The Workshop provided an overview of social impact assessment, public participation and gender mainstreaming, and presented and discussed practical examples of the importance of identifying and managing social and gender impacts for effective environmental protection policy and water resource management. The Project Draft Result Framework was also discussed and some new / alternative activities within the current budget plan were identified to implement the project in the most effective way Chinese core partners feel. All the discussion results were recorded during the workshop and incorporated into the final Inception Report, which submitted to the PCO by August 2009.
One of the key components of the project is training in Australia during November 2009. It will provide Chinese environmental managers with an opportunity to learn Australian practices of social impact, public participation, and gender experience in natural resource management, identify new partners and enhance existing partnerships between and among Australian and Chinese environmental agencies and institutions. Participants will include two delegates from each Chinese core partner, one from MOFCOM and one interpreter.