- Lead organisation: WWF MedPo
- Other partners: Norwegian aid, MAVA, local institutions in the 8 countries of implementation
- Funding: Financed by Norwegian aid and MAVA
- Brief description: The project aims at creating, branding and promoting a large network of protected areas covering eight countries in the Dinaric Arc region in South-Eastern Europe, which covers some 100,000 km2 and more than 6,000 km of coastline. Implementing this project will create an association of nature and national parks in the terri-tory of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the FYR of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. The project strategy has three axes: Networking, involving about 75 national, regional and landscape parks, several public and private institutions, as well as NGOs and international partners – Capacity building, focusing on protected areas and ecosystem services assessment and benefit, adaptation to EU requirements, introduction of the process and benefits of obtaining European Charter for Sustainable Tourism (ECST) and climate change dimension for both natural resources and people livelihood – Commu-nication, with the creation, promotion and advertising campaign of the “Parks Dinarides” brand with the slogan “The world undiscovered”.
- Time schedule: January 2012 – December 2015
- Current status: The 1st Dinaric Arc Parks International Conference held in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 19-24 November 2012, gathered over 150 participants from 14 countries, in order to develop partnerships and exchange between institutions and individuals to facilitate the implementation of the three project objectives.
- A branding media campaign is ongoing, with a TV commercial present in all 8 countries on national and cable TV stations, and ads in print media and on the web. The website about the project, with the description of all parks of the network in 6 languages, is hosted at www.discoverdinarides.com .
- Concerning the capacity building programme, the main emphasis is on Protected Area Benefits Assessment workshops, that WWF implements with interest groups in all 8 countries. In the workshops, WWF with protected area staff and their stakeholders try to answer the question of the value of PA with the application of PA-BAT for collecting information on values and benefits of the protected area in which each workshop is held. Workshops have been held in parks of Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 15 parks in the Dinaric Arc region became members of the Europarc Federation and are trying to obtain a European Charter for Sustainable Tourism. In May 2013 WWF took representatives from those parks to a study tour through French parks that already have the charter and in June 2013 employees from PAs from the region visited national parks in the FYR of Macedonia and in Kosovo.