A new Barents Program in progress
The Barents Regional Committee met in Kirkenes, Norway, this week. On top of its agenda was the outline of a new Barents Program, the “Barents 2010 PLUS”.
The recently completed project “Barents 2010” will be followed up by the “Barents 2010 PLUS”. Despite the similar names, the two programs focus on quite different issues.
Barents 2010 PLUS is divided into three main focus areas. One area is to find sustainable ways to tackle new climatic conditions and create a sustainable environment in the Barents Region. Climate change has major impact especially on the indigenous peoples in the region, who are heavily dependent on surrounding nature.
Another focus area is human resources and the need for competence and skilled labour in the region. The purpose is to give more attention to the demographic situation of the High North, where young people and especially young women are leaving for the south.
A third important focus of Barents 2010 PLUS is better economical cooperation. Here, transportation routes and infrastructure improvements will be given extra attention.
– We wish to include all regions better in the Barents 2010 PLUS program than we did in the last program. We have learnt a lot from the first projects, and we will use this knowledge to make Barents 2010 PLUS even better, says Maria Östensson from Västerbotten Län in Sweden, who is lead partner in the program.
The Barents 2010 PLUS project has a budget of 2.5 million EUR, which will be financed by the 13 Barents counties as well as EU-funds. The plan is to give some of the counties the responsibility for the various focus areas.
– All regions have their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore it is important to use the skills of each region so that the whole of the Barents Region becomes more robust internationally, says Kari Aalto from Oulu region in Finland, who is Chairman of the Barents Regional Committee.
During the meeting in Kirkenes the committee worked on the political contents of the Barents 2010 PLUS programme. The plan is to have the project ready for discussion for the regional politicians when the meet in the Barents Regional Council in Umeå in November. Maria Östensson hopes the funding application can be ready in the spring of 2009.
