The seminar is a part of the project,that is financed by East-East Program "Partnerships without borders" of the International Renaissance Fond and Milieukontakt Oost-Europa of The Netherlands Royal Embassy in Ukraine.

Aim of the project is elaboration of the methodological guidelines the to "Strategy for local communities development on the Biosphere Reserve territory" by the group of specialists from Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova and Ukraine on the example of Ukrainian part of planned International Biosphere Reserve "Roztotchya".

In the International Seminar took part 35 participators, 12 of them were foreign participators. In particular, Association Pegaz (Wroclaw, Poland), UNESCO ecological club (Lyublin, Poland), UNESCO ProNatura (Bucharest, Romania), Association of nature protection in North-Eastern Slovakia (Stara Lyubovnya, Slovakia), ecological NGO "SalvaEco" (Chisinau, Moldova). The ecological non-profit organizations, nature protection objects, local authority, Zhovkva and Yavoriv regional councils, Department of the ecology and nature resources in Lviv region represented Ukraine.

The project addresses on attraction of the local communities of the new created biosphere reserve to practical promotion of their region development, using advantages of biosphere reserve. As the practice shows, a lot of misunderstanding are with communities during the creation of new nature protection objects: people don't understand the functions and designations of the biosphere reserve, they don't understand the advantages to work and live on the protected areas, people afraid for some limitations in agriculture.

The participants defined SWOT function of the local communities and the cooperation between different sectors. Was discussed on the main issues of activities and development of local communities on the biosphere reserve territory, they determined the importance of ecological non-profit organizations creation and function, which can be the mediator of cooperation between nature protected object direction, local authority, small business and communities. In the same time non-profit organizations can provide community education, lead the informational campaigns, as well as to lead trainings for local communities on private ecological small business. Similar experience on work with local communities on the biosphere reserve territories showed our foreign guests from Romania, Poland, Slovakia and Moldova.

The discussed issues were a big contribution to elaboration of the guidelines to strategy for local communities development on the biosphere reserve territory will be published as a brochure in Ukrainian and English. The target group of the brochure will be the local communities, which live on the biosphere reserve territory, the biosphere reserves, local authorities and local non-profit organization in countries-participators.