Mission: A sea-change in policy and practice, for sustainable development in South East Europe

Definition: Sustainable Development is defined as development decision which balances social, economic and environmental benefits for the sake of our children and our children's children.

Where: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo^[1], Macedonia^[2], Montenegro, and Serbia are known collectively to most of the world as the Balkans,  but many of those who live here prefer to call it South East Europe or SEE.  What ever you call it, this region has experienced the triple transition from conflict to peace, central planning to free-market economies, and socialism to fledgling democracies.

What: In spite of all this turmoil, South East Europe (SEE) stands on another threshold – a threshold that the rest of Europe passed long ago - and the decisions made in the next decade will be critical to how it deals with this fourth challenge.

Why: The name SEE Change Net has three layers of meaning. At its most basic it simply stands for a Network seeking Change in South East Europe or SEE.  However, as SEE Change Net deals with sustainable development issues, the “SEE” can also stand for Social, Economic, and Environmental; which are the three pillars of sustainable development and must be in harmony for long term, people centred development to occur. Finally “SEE Change” is also a pun on the phrase “Sea Change”. It comes from Ariel’s wonderfully evocative song in William Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest' and we have come to refer to a “sea change” as being a profound transformation. The logo is a distorted set of Borromean rings, meaning three mutually interlocked rings, no two of which are linked, so if any one of the rings is cut, all three fall apart. In sustainable development the three rings represent the interplay of Economy, Ecology and Society and the point of intersection of all three represents a sustainable development solution. Since the region suffers from a type of  development, which tends to discounts environment and citizens, our logo is a broken set of Borromean rings representing the dysfunctional nature of development. The logo was designed Imelda Ramovic.

SEE is currently nearer to being sustainable, as a region, than many of its European neighbours. However its favourable position^{[3] i}s being undermined by negative development trends^[4]; SEE has reached a tipping point. No region is better placed to leap frog all the mistakes Old Europe has already made and become a model for sustainable development in New Europe. Of the many potential policy areas that will be examined three can be found here.