Acknowledgements

This report was compiled from a significant amount of data collected by the SILAQ countries, and a number of assessments, studies and reports concerning existing policies and approaches to the reduction of sulphur oxides and particulate matter pollution. We would like to thank the many colleagues who contributed their knowledge, ideas, and experiences to this Report.

Our thanks go to the members of the Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality (SILAQ) Working Group, in particular Karel Blaha, Czech Ministry of Environment; Zsuzsanna Bibok, Hungarian Ministry for Environment and Regional Policy; Irena Plewicka, Polish Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry; Elena Popovici, Romanian Ministry of Waters, Forests and Environment Protection; Anna Violova, Slovak Ministry of Environment; Katarina Magulova, Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute; Anton Planinsek and Bojan Rode, Hydrometeorological Institute of Slovenia, for their help in obtaining the data provided in this report and their careful review of and comments to the structure and content. Thanks are also extended to the colleagues from the Balkan Science and Education Centre of Ecology and Environment in Sofia for preparing this Synthesis Report.

We would also like to thank to Sylvia Correa, James Yarbrough, and Petra Sanches of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), Magda Lovei of the World Bank, Douglas Clark of COWI Consult, Denmark, Dietmar Heinze of VEAG, Germany, Paul Dax from the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) office in Bulgaria, and Robert Anderson who served as a consultant to HIID, for their support in sharing their experiences, providing information and their valuable comments.

Special thanks goes to the staff of the Regional Environmental Center (REC) for Central and Eastern Europe, in particular: Miroslav Chodak and Mihail Staynov, for overall coordination of the work under the SILAQ project, Pawel Kazmierczyk for designing and compiling the final version of this Report, Jerome Simpson for proofreading and copyediting the Report, and Sylvia Magyar for arranging the layout and printing.

Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which made the work of the Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality possible.

I trust this Report will prove invaluable to those who read it; decisionmakers, environmental managers, and specific interest groups, as well as to the follow up work of the Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality.

Dimiter Kantardjiev
Chairman, Sofia Initiative on Local Air Quality
Director General, National Centre of Environment and Sustainable Development,
Ministry of Environment and Waters, Bulgaria

REC * PUBLICATIONS * REDUCTION OF SO₂ AND PARTICULATE EMISSIONS * ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS