The Institute for Ecological Modernisation (IEM) is an international foundation registered in Bulgaria, which focuses on the mobilisation of intellectual, social, governmental and financial resources and applying them to the process of sustainable modernisation of urban environmental-health management in Bulgaria and its neighbouring post-communist countries.

IEM was registered in October, 2000. Organisation’s legal status is a foundation, one of two possible institutional arrangements for non-profit organisations (NGOs) in Bulgaria.

The Institute for Ecological Modernisation, hereinafter referred to as “the Institute”, is operating in the broad area of improving the quality of life and environmental protection. It has a focus on integrated and sustainable modernisation processes, in which the social, environmental, health, economic, political and institutional, aspects of modernisation activities receive equal weight with the more traditional focus on technology and performance.

 

IEM’s substantive areas of focus

The Institute has a broad focus on stakeholder mobilisation in relation to the modernisation of the public services, connected with environmental protection, environmental and social equity, health and quality of life. IEM offers several areas of technical specialisation:

 

Integrated planning and strategic environmental assessment of plans, programmes and policies:

The modernization of public services requires several types of planning. IEM offers the following of them: Integrated environmental health and urban management planning; Natural resources utilization planning; Integrated planning of waste management; Integrated coastal zone planning and management; Analysis and planning of the privatisation of public services. In parallel with the integrated planning IEM has a very strong focus on the Strategic Environmental Assessments of plans and programmes, policies and legislative acts, as well as Environmental Impact Assessments of concrete investment proposals.

 

Stakeholder and citizen identification, mobilisation and participation:

IEM’s primary focus is on the conception, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of initiatives to involve citizens and other stakeholders in the process of sustainable ecological modernisation. These initiatives may include various actions: citizen education campaigns, opinion polls, planning of public participation in concrete activities, creating focus groups, carrying out surveys, public relations initiatives, and other related actions. Two special areas of focus include 1) gender in urban environmental services, and 2) the role of minorities, in the informal sector contributing to the urban environmental services.

 

Social adaptation of the groups living in social distress and in a higher health risk

IEM actively supports the social adaptation of the groups of the population living in social distress and inequity compared to the rest of the population, as well as in conditions of higher health risk. Such groups are the ethnic minorities, the marginalised groups, the disabled people, the children and the elderly people, the drug addicts, etc. This category includes also the so called “informal sector” – these are people who make their living on non-organised work, in conditions of high health risk, without benefiting from the social and health protection of the State. IEM is trying to involve those people in the society in the process of modernising the environmental, health and social activity in the country and provide for them equal to the rest of the citizens conditions for work and living.

 

Environmental, health and social entrepreneurship

In this area IEM supports privatisation and local development of environmental, health and social services in the following ways:

1) preparing municipalities to privatise environmental, health and social services;

2) capacity building and coaching of entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs.

 

Social and technological aspects of waste management

Waste management is the greatest socio-technological challenge in the filed of environment for the Central and Eastern European countries, and for this reason it is a separate substantial area of focus for IEM. In this area IEM deals with modernization of waste collection, separate collection, waste prevention, landfill siting, recycling, composting, fee analysis, service-based budgeting, efficiency optimisation, privatisation and modernisation options, compliance with European Union landfill, waste, and packaging directives.