Ukraine's Environmental Protection Minister Heorhiy Filipchuk met in Kyiv with Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Norway to Ukraine Olav Berstad, the environment ministry press service told. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the perspectives of cooperation between the two countries in the field of environmental protection, rational use of natural resources and the settlement of Ukraine's integration tasks in ecology sector, Cabinet press service reported.
The government's program Ukrainian Breakthrough: For People, Not Politicians provides for improvement of the national ecologic policy, Filipchuk said. Special attention is paid to the formation of prerequisites for Ukraine's going over to the grounds of stable development of environmental management.
The minister pointed out the role of Norway in promulgating at a global level the rational use of natural resources, particularly, the intention to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO) concerning financing of ecology projects in Ukraine.
Berstad spoke highly about the Ukrainian government program on the whole, and as regards environmental policy. He also showed interest in the deepening of Ukraine - Norway relations. It was pointed out that Norway is ready to share its experience in the field of environmental management, while having effective mechanisms of environmental project financing. That country has a special stake in cooperation on the Kyoto Protocol.
Apart from this, the Norwegian party is financing programs for cooperation with Ukraine in the field of energy efficiency, and environmental protection. The project aims at raising power efficiency level in industry and housing sector, reducing the level of pollution, perfection of environmental and stable energy policy in Ukraine.
The parties also discussed the directions of further cooperation. Particularly, they touched on introduction in Ukraine on stable development grounds of effective models for forestry and hunting industry development that are used in Norway, implementation of joint projects for preserving biological and landscape variety, the construction of ecology systems.
One more result of the meeting will be acceleration of work of the interparliamentary group for the two countries' ecology policy.
