Summary of the Project

The main purpose of this cross-border project is to place the problem of ‘food security versus energy security’ on the political agenda of the Black Sea region. Large rural areas in these important agricultural countries remain uncultivated given the lack of state subsidies and poor market power of small entrepreneurs. These ultimately abandon lands to the will of businesses that naturally follow the ‘higher-profit’ logic of the market preferring ‘fuel over food’ when choosing to cultivate land. The social/political implications are severe: higher poverty, economic migration, environmental damage.

The objectives of this project are the following:

1. Identifying and analysing potential and existing threats for the region (in terms of the ‘food security versus energy security’); To accomplish this objective, the first three months of the project the team will collect and share data available at each national level as well as analyse and compare data in order to produce a comprehensive Regional Report.

2. Raising public awareness on these threats at the regional level; The information and data gathered by all project partners will be presented and debated with the occasion of an international workshop that will gather representatives of specialized NGOs from all countries of the Black Sea. The workshop’s final outcome is the setting up of a regional (informal) think-tank.

3. Encouraging public participation to advocate for responsible political choices with respect to the issue of ‘food security versus energy security’. This objective will be achieved through the last activity of the project: information dissemintation. In the last three months of the project the team will publicize the results of the entire project and its Report.