Today, this Friday April 11, 2008 12:30pm noon at the Montenegrin Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Protection, a press conference was held by Mrs. Nadia Pinardi, ADRICOSM-STAR Project Coordinator, Mrs. Jelena Knežević from the Montenegrin Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Protection, and Mr. Christian Melis from the Chancery of the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, to present ADRICOSM-STAR first year scientific report on Montenegro coastal area and Bojana river catchment:

ADRICOSM-STAR: First year scientific report

Following is the audio record in English and Montenegrin of Mrs. Nadia Pinardi’s address, in Podgorica, Montenegro, April 11:

The ADRICOSM Partnership was launched as a Type II Initiative at the World Summit on Sustainable development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 by the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea.

The ADRICOSM Partnership has two general objectives:
 Efficiently organize, evaluate and coordinate multinational research, development and implementation programs that advance the understanding, monitoring and predictive capabilities in the Adriatic Sea area for the establishment of integrated coastal areas and river basin management systems; and
 Consolidate the monitoring and prediction system by involving users of the research products.

The Partnership works by implementing several Projects based upon an integrated monitoring and modeling approach for the Adriatic coastal areas and the overall river catchments, connecting land surface, underground and urban water systems with the marine environment for the assessment and management of the marine ecosystem and the water resources. The most recent Project is ADRICOSM-STAR implementing the ADRICOSM Partnership strategy in the Montenegro coastal area.

ADRICOSM-STAR aims at the development and partial implementation of an integrated coastal area and river and urban waters management system that considers both observational and modelling components.

The area of investigation is the Bojana river Delta and the whole Montenegro Adriatic coast: the project considers transboundary water issues, such as the Bojana river that is managed by both Montenegro and Albania, and the Montenegro coastal area which is naturally affected by Albanian marine waters.

The project develops innovative components such as studies of climate change impacts on the water resources and sediment transport. This is a new element of the ADRICOSM Partnership that will be implemented for the first time in this project contributing to the general development of tools and concepts for the integrated management of the Adriatic coastal areas.

The project has a duration of three years starting from March 2007 and involves 19 public and private partners from Italy, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania. The coordinating Institution is the Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC) and the scientific coordinator is Prof. Nadia Pinardi of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) and University of Bologna.