European Environment Agency (EEA) Anita Künitzer

1. ‘Role of the Marine Conventions in Eurowaternet development’ European Environment Agency (EEA)Anita Künitzer http://www.eea.eu.int

2. European regional seas

3. Why cooperation with Marine Conventions? • Coordination of indicator development • Same message of EEA and regional assessments • Use of same country data (harmonised by Marine Conventions at regional level and EWN at European level) Cooperation through 1. MoUs (bilateral) 2. IRF (European level)

4. Data sources for EEA water indicators EEA water indicators EWN Partly EWN EEA data ware house Country data Regional Convention data European, global data 35 countries AMAP, BSC ICES, HELCOM OSPAR UNEP/MAP Eurostat EU Directives FAO

5. Eurowaternet (EWN) • Quantity • Emissions • Groundwater • Rivers • Lakes • Transitional and coastal waters • Marine waters

6. Data sources for indicators on transitional, coastal and marine waters • History: • Questionnaire in 1999: data from Marine Conventions and in addition from countries on eutrophication, hazardous substances and oil • Testing of indicators during 1999, 2000, 2001, • IRF workshop on water quality indicators, June 2001, • IRF working group on data flow (recommendations). • Now: • Regular update of indicators, • Annual dataflow, • Link of inland and coastal/marine waters (WFD approach) • Development of EWN guidelines trans., coastal, marine.

7. Eurowaternet transitional, coastal, marine • Parameters at present: hazardous substances (WFD), eutrophication parameters (nutrients, oxygen, chl. a), station description. • Parameters in future: ecological quality elements • Data sources: national monitoring programmes, streamlining of dataflow with EU Directives (WFD, present water Directives), Eurostat (future), Marine Conventions (IRF streamlining).

8. EIONET Data Flow OSPAR HELCOM AMAP EEA/ETC/MCE UNEP/MAP Conventions Secretariat NILU ICES Database Riverine input Database Marine Quality Database Atmospheric input EIONET Server Member States

9. Objectives of the Inter Regional Forum (IRF) • To facilitate the exchange and possible integration of existing data and information produced by regional Marine Conventions/Action Plans with the EEA and ETCs • To improve working relations and task sharing to avoid duplication of work

10. Major regional Marine Conventions/Action Plans involved in the IRF • AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme) • BSC (Black Sea Commission) • CWSS (Common Wadden Sea Secretariat) • HELCOM (Helsinki Commission) • OSPAR (OSPAR Commission) • UNEP/MAP (Mediterranean Action Plan)

11. Steering group members (until 2000): OSPAR HELCOM UNEP/MAP EEA with ETC Water Core group members (since 2001): OSPAR HELCOM UNEP/MAP EEA with ETC Water AMAP JRC BSC DG Environment IRF steering/core group

12. Organisation of IRF • IRF role: advisory function , provision of recommendations on assessment issues. Implementation of recommendations on a voluntary basis by member organisations • The IRF consists since 2001 of a small and active IRF Core Group (5 Conventions Secretariats, EEA+ETC/ WTR, JRC, DG Env), which meets on a flexible time scale. • It holds larger IRF workshop when necessary. • An web interest group for the IRF has been set-up on CIRCLE, partly open to public, partly restricted to the Core Group members, which gives access to shared documents (http://eea.eionet.eu.int:8980/Public/irc/eionet-circle/irf/home) • Improved Co-operation in monitoring, data collection and handling/assessment of the marine environment, through implementation of agreed proposals (no more “recommendations”) based on common procedures with the consensus of the governing bodies of Regional Conventions (top-down approach)

13. Fields of cooperation • ASSESSMENT: Geographic Information Systems, Indicators, Statistical tools were identified as relevant tools and analysed. Ad-hoc working groups were set-up to start harmonising assessment products • INDICATORS: Common issues and related DPSIR indicators were identified by a working group on indicators (lead EEA). A joint workshop on indicators with countries in 2001 resulted in a set of recommendations on water quality indicators • DATA EXCHANGE: Availability, Access/Ownership and Management were analysed by a working group (lead OSPAR) and resulted in a set of recommendations • GIS: EUMARIS, a prototype of a marine GIS focussing on Eutrophication was developed by ETC/MCE. Common use and application of a marine GIS were analysed by a working group on GIS (lead ETC/MCE). The Kiev report forms a test case for common GIS application.

14. Major common themes of policy and DPSIR framework

15. Quality elements measured by the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Conventions : monitored, : not monitored systematically

16. IRF recommendations on data flow The Steering Group of the Inter-Regional Forum (December 2000) recommends to the governing bodies of the organisations involved in the Forum to agree: • that there is an urgent need to improve the situation with regard to the handling and management of data and information for the purpose of marine environmental assessments on a European level; • To the following basic principles for an improved situation: • A harmonised data policy regarding, i.a. access, availability of data and transparency of the use of the data; • individual Data Providers should be able to submit the same type of data to a single specialist Data Centre (or functional equivalent). Such a Data Centre (handling data of a specific type) should work for all European Data Receivers; • all relevant Data Receivers and Data Users should be able to use the information in the Data Centre for their own purposes in an efficient way; • with the view to ensuring cost efficiency and continuity, all principle Data Receivers should contribute to maintaining the Data Centres in proportion to the use they are making of these centres; • when developing reporting systems and assessment methodologies, the requirements of data handling should be fully taken into account.

17. EEA approach on streamlining data collection from seas EEA collects EWN transitional, coastal and marine data for European indicators from: • Marine Conventions (countries identify stations to EEA/ETC, focus on marine waters), • Countries directly (focus on transitional and coastal waters following WFD approach)

18. Domingo Jiménez-Beltrán Executive Director, EEA The EEA's Mission ... is to deliver timely, targeted, relevant and reliableinformation to policy-makers and the public for the development and implementation of sound environmental policies in the European Union and other EEA member countries.

19. Marine Conventions Scientific Use of research data and not legally binding monitoring Periodic assessments every 4-10 years Annual assessments only for oil spills, oil discharges, riverine inputs (OSPAR) No annual assessments for hazardous substances in organisms and sediment, nutrients in water, biological quality elements EEA Indicator based Use of legal reporting obligation data (few marine data) Annual assessments based on regional assessments, where available Problem of data availability from Marine Conventions due to missing own assessment Present assessment differences

20. Coordination of indicator production between EEA and marine Conventions, option 1: • 1.countries report their marine monitoring data annually to the data centres of Marine Conventions (this is at present not happening in several cases). • 2.Marine Conventions identify the need for annual assessments of their monitoring data. • 3.Marine Conventions undertake annual assessments of their timely monitoring data and make the data, the graphs and maps as well as the assessment text available to EEA. Marine Conventions will take the needs of EEA (core set of indicators) into account in monitoring, data collection and assessment. • 4.EEA updates its European wide indicator fact sheets based on data and assessment received from Marine Conventions and member countries through Eurowaternet.

21. Coordination of indicator production between EEA and marine Conventions, option 2: • 1.same as option 1: countries report their marine monitoring data annually to the data centres of Marine Conventions. • 2.same as option 1: Marine Conventions identify the need for short annual assessments of their monitoring data but do not have the resources to do so. • 3.EEA undertakes annual assessments of timely monitoring data received from Marine Conventions and member countries and makes the regional graphs and maps as well as the assessment text available to Marine Conventions. EEA will take the needs of Marine Conventions into account. The responsible ETC partner would coordinate the indicator development with the responsible lead country of the Marine Convention. • 4.Marine Conventions updates its regional annual assessment based on graphs and maps received from EEA.

22. Coordination of indicator production between EEA and marine Conventions, [option 3]: • If the Marine Convention don’t agree on the need for annual assessments of their monitoring data, EEA needs to carry out annual updates of indicator fact sheets independently. In such case there will be a problem with the ownership of monitoring data and the availability of these data to EEA. This means that EEA member countries need to decide, if EEA should in such a case still rely on Marine Convention monitoring data for Eurowaternet transitional, coastal and marine data flow.