Reducing Community Carbon Footprint by a Circular Economy Approach in the Republic of Serbia (Circular Communities in Serbia)

Published on February 14, 2023

The objectives of the project are to reduce the carbon footprint of the community using the principles of circular economy in Serbia through support the establishment of policy and institutional framework aligned with the EU policy in the field of CE and support to new resource and energy efficient business ideas, products, investments and process improvements.

The project implementation strategy and expected results are related to the strengthening institutional capacities and creating an enabling policy environment for tackling GHG emission reduction at the city and community level by fostering better resource efficiency, as well as to support the development and implementation of a portfolio of new, carbon neutral or close to carbon neutral pilot/demonstration projects and business ideas contributing to circular economy together with public outreach activities.

The project is going to support the following: the establishment of an enabling policy and institutional framework aligned with the EU circular economy policies with related training and other capacity building of the key stakeholders and by fostering broad community participation in developing and implementing those policies; the establishment of a Low Carbon Communities Innovation Platform (LCCIP) to source and support the development and implementation of new resource efficient circular economy related business ideas, products, investments and process improvements; selected pilot CE investments by using the LCCIP and circular economy challenge calls and UNDP Low-Value Performance - Based Payments linked to them; and scaling up the project results by related knowledge gathering, dissemination and public outreach activities.

The Republic of Serbia adopts and implements climate change and environmentally friendly strategies that increase community resilience, decrease carbon footprint and boost the benefits of national investments. The mechanism for financing modality for combatting climate change should be built on successful testing and piloting of performance-based grants and a challenge-based will be applied for advancing circular economy.

The direct GHG reduction impact of the project has been assessed at 100 kilotons of CO2eq over the estimated 20-year lifetime of the pilot investment, together with the estimated consequential (indirect) GHG reduction impact of 1 640 kilotons of CO2eq and related social, economic and local environmental benefits.