Strategic Moves - Regional Environmental Center for Central and ...

Authors and acknowledgements
This publication has been drafted by Ruslan Zhechkov, Ellen Baltzar, Dusan
Sevic and Raisa Gerasina, members of the Environmental Financing Topic Area
(EFTA) at the REC. Detailed comments have been provided by Oreola Ivanova-
Nacheva, Venelina Varbova, Miriam Markus-Johansson, Ana Petrovska (REC former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Joanna Fiedler (European Commission)
and Jennifer McGuinn (consultant).
Ruslan Zhechkov has 10 years’ experience in SEE working in the field of environment
and environmental financing. He has worked full-time for the REC for eight
years and is currently a leader of the REC’s Environmental Financing Topic Area.
Ruslan has extensive experience and knowledge of SEE countries and has worked
in all of them on a variety of assignments linked to environmental financing. Ruslan
was a grants manager in the environmental project financing facility EcoLinks
between 2001 and 2003, covering several areas including water supply and water
management in companies. For the past two years Ruslan has been managing the
EU-funded Priority Environmental Investment Programme for South Eastern Europe
(PEIP), working closely with the European Commission (EC), IFIs and the
Infrastructure Preparation Facility (IPF) etc. He was part of the team that drafted
the National Environmental Investment Strategy of the former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia, which was adopted by the government in 2009. He has been project
director of several pre-feasibility studies in water supply and waste management
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
He was also part of the team reviewing the Macedonian Environmental
Fund and participated in trainings for the establishment of an environmental fund
in Montenegro.
Ellen Baltzar has worked for the REC since 2007 as a junior expert in the field of
environmental financing. Ellen was part of the PEIP team between 2007 and 2009.
In the course of several years’ work on regional projects, Ellen has gained broad experience
of working with environmental policy issues in Central and Eastern Europe
(CEE) and SEE. She holds a master’s degree in environmental social science
with a specialisation in human ecology from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Dusan Sevic is an environmental assessment expert with more than 13 years’ experience
in CEE and SEE in the fields of environmental impact assessment (EIA),
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