Towards a new plan, for CCB and the Baltic Sea

CCB • May 24, 2019

The CCB Board Meeting (16-17/05), Annual Conference (18/05) and Extraordinary General Meeting (19/05) were held in Baltezers, Latvia, at Baltvilla Hotel.

The Board Meeting addressed important issues, including the approval of:

The theme of CCB’s Annual Conference 2019 was “ Towards a new plan, for CCB and the Baltic Sea “.
In the first part, there were group discussions and presentations on the project proposals for 2020-2021 of CCB Working Areas: Water Protection in Agriculture, River Basin and Wastewater Management, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Biodiversity and Nature Conservation, Hazardous Substances and Marine Litter, Harmful Installations and Maritime Transport, Sustainable Development in Coastal and Marine Areas.

Moreover, some participants from the transboundary Daugava river rafting/kayaking expedition , which took place on 14-17 May, talked about the event and shared their experiences.

In the second part, participants were guided by two external consultants from Presencing Institute through the process of “looking inwards” into the values of the coalition and reinvigorate the “soul of the coalition”. Agenda of the day consisted of:

  • Introduction and lecture about systems thinking, divides we see in world, Theory U

Related documents:
– Presentation from Julie Arts, PI
– Executive summary (in different languages): https://www.presencing.org/resource/executive-summaries
– Tools: https://www.presencing.org/resource/tools

  • Quality of Listening & Dialogue + Exercise: dialogue walk
  • 3-D Sculpting: sculpt current reality of what the coalition looks like today and imagining desired optimal future and identification of actions
  • Prototyping Cafe: moving into joint action around topics/initiatives that want to be discussed further (coming out of 3-D sculpting)

During the General Meeting, the CCB Board accepted two new member organizations, SOFIA (Sweden) and Center for Environmental Solutions – CES (Belarus), and elected the new Board Member from Russia and the new Alternate from Sweden.

CCB´s events ended with a guided tour at Kemeri National Park.

CCB expresses a warm welcome to the new organisations and board members and wishes a strong and successful collaboration for the upcoming years.
These meetings represented once again an important moment for all of us to share ideas and strengthen our relations towards a new plan of actions and the CCB 30th Anniversary in 2020.

Last but not least, a special thanks to all the participants and sincere gratitude to Janis Matulis and his colleagues from “ Latvian Green Movement ” for their support in the organisation of CCB´s events.

(foto credit: Andis Uzulnieks, LaGM ).

CCB is looking for a Network Officer to join our team at the CCB International Secretariat

By CCB • April 9, 2025
Coalition Clean Baltic – CCB is a politically independent network, uniting 27 environmental non-profit organizations, as well as partners and experts from 11 countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. The main goal of CCB is to promote the protection and improvement of the environment and natural resources of the Baltic Sea region by encouraging new and constructive approaches and engaging people to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. CCB Secretariat is based in Uppsala, Sweden.

Attacks on NGOs: 570+ Organisations Join Forces to Defend Civil Society

By CCB • April 7, 2025
European civil society organisations (CSOs) are currently facing an attack coming from certain Members of the European Parliament. Spearheaded by some MEPs from the European People’s Party (EPP) and by far-right groups, this attack resorts to misleading arguments to fabricate a scandal. This portrayal has been amplified through the media, with notable exceptions of articles that attempted to clarify this misleading narrative. European CSOs are crucial to ensure the voices of citizens from different parts of Europe are heard in the EU institutions. Attacks against civil society are unfortunately not new and are exacerbated by this harmful idea. Furthermore, for-profit corporate lobbying is through the roof when compared to non-profit advocacy. In 2024, the 50 corporations with the largest lobbying budgets collectively spent nearly €200 million on lobbying the EU alone (66% more than in 2015). Comparing this to the funding environmental NGOs receive under the LIFE programme - €15.6 million annually of a €700 million yearly budget - truly shows the weakness of this ‘scandal’. This is why over 570 civil society organisations from 40 countries, including all EU Member States, have joined forces to call on those in power to act now and ensure that civil society is adequately funded and enabled to share our crucial perspectives . In this statement, we address: The source of this false narrative; Inaccurate claims made about how CSOs obtain and use funding; Why it’s paramount that CSOs receive sufficient funding; The need for civil dialogue to enable CSOs participation. Democracy is about the right of citizens to be collectively heard for building an inclusive society and a shared European future; properly funded independent CSOs are a crucial tool for that. We call on decision-makers to ensure civil society organisations can thrive and play their role in interacting with policy-makers in order to have a more fully informed decision-making process. Read the full statement here . -END Civil Society Europe (CSE) is the coordination of civil society organisations at EU level. Through its membership, CSE unites EU-level membership-based organisations that reach out to millions of people active in or supported by not-for-profits and civil society organisations across the EU. CSE was created by several civil society organisations as a follow-up to the European Year of Citizens and was established as an international not-for-profit under Belgian law in 2016. Since then, it has become the point of reference for EU institutions on transversal issues concerning civil dialogue and civic space.