Central and Eastern Europe research boost Central and Eastern Europe research boost Climate Change and Environment © Thinkstock Decades of mismanagement have resulted in severe damage to the natural environment of CEE countries. Although CEE researchers have conducted research into air and chemical pollution as well as environmental risk since the middle of the 20th century, their work was ignored by national policymakers. This situation was remedied by the ENVIMPACT project, whose aim was to increase the involvement of CEE countries in the Environment theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). It is hoped that this collaboration will result in new solutions for the lasting protection of our shared environment. ENVIMPACT identified innovative environmental research originating from CEE countries based on pre-established selection criteria. The identified practices and results were then validated and disseminated to researchers and stakeholders via the project website. Dissemination and exploitation of practices for environmental research were identified using questionnaires and interviews. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis was used to draw up a list of the most common good practices. These were then ranked to create a list of environmental 'champions'. In addition, project partners created an audiovisual catalogue of best practices in the communication and exploitation of research. National inter-sectorial workshops were organised in the CEE partner countries in order to bring together researchers, policymakers and industry representatives. Researchers were trained in the best ways for disseminating and exploiting research results using bespoke training modules based on identified needs and project results. Follow-up activities involved a series of online mentoring sessions for CEE researchers using a cost-effective web conference tool. Results were disseminated with the aid of the project website and every four months an e-newsflash was distributed by the consortium that featured news on environment-related research. A 'project partners only' area on the website dealt with operations and knowledge management, planning, quality and management of data. The transnational project conference on successful tools for research and development held in Brussels in May 2013 comprised the third pillar of ENVIMPACT's dissemination strategy. Thanks to the project, CEE countries can now contribute to European research as well as help to protect the natural environment. Keywords Central and Eastern Europe, environmental research, natural environment, policymakers
