OREANDA-NEWS. September 10, 2009. The regular regional meeting on the marine environment of the Caspian Sea was opened at the President Hotel in Ashgabat. This forum is the continuation of the two-day regional meeting of the government-designated experts, who are responsible for drafting the supplementary treaty documents to the Tehran Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea. As was reported, the meetings of the parties were organized Ministry of Nature Protection of Turkmenistan in collaboration with the Tehran Convention Secretariat ad interim under the aegis of UNEP and UNDP and EU-TACIS CASPECO project. The leading environmental specialists from Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and the international experts and consultants took part in the forums.

It should be noted that the major outcome of the first meeting, which was held in Ashgabat on September 7-8, was the basic texts of the Protocol for the Protection of the Caspian Sea against Pollution from land-based sources and land-based activities and five annexes endorsed by all the negotiating parties. The document, which will be signed in 2010 at the 3rd Conference of the Parties to the Convention in Kazakhstan, is an important step to concert effort of the littoral countries to address the problem of marine pollution in the region.

The aim of this environmental forum is to develop the sharing mechanisms of the environmental information network. The participants discussed the issues related to development of the unified regional environmental assessment framework of and the plans of actions to protect the environment of the Caspian region. Harmonization of the environmental assessment methods and distribution of necessary environmental information among the littoral states are the major commitments of the parties. The profound knowledge of the functioning and condition of the ecosystem of the Caspian Sea, the effective mechanisms for providing the information will enable the countries in the region to take the most effective preventive measures in close collaboration and a proper manner to protect the Caspian Sea from pollution, preserve its natural resources and ensure long-term sustainable development of the region.

Cooperation with the international organisations, which actively provide technical and consultative assistance in implementing the joint projects and programmes at both regional and national levels, plays an essential role in fulfilling the designated tasks to meet the Tehran Convention provisions. As is known, the EU TACIS Project “Caspian Water Quality Monitoring and Action Plan for Areas of Pollution Concern” was successfully completed under the Caspian Environment Programme this summer and as a result, the Regional Water Quality Monitoring Programme was developed.

To specify the priority trends and to assess the monitoring and capacity building needs, develop the basic environmental quality indicators and integrated programme for monitoring the Caspian Sea ecosystem were the items of the forum agenda. The overview of the relevant international practice was presented to the participants. Exchanging views on the results of the national practices of monitoring the Caspian Sea the participants focused on the high quality and purity of its waters that convincingly evidenced the concern of the littoral states for preservation of the unique water body.

The agenda focused on the need to develop the unified standard format of the national reports on the activities taken to implement the provisions of the Tehran Convention and its protocols and the procedures for preparing the first report on the environmental conditions in the Caspian Sea region. Preparation of the national reports in accordance with international standards provides for compiling the database that will be used to coordinate the activities, to identify the areas of further environmental policy initiatives to ensure conservation and sustainable management of the environment in the region. The participants discussed these issues as well as the opportunities to establish the supporting regional legal instrument for monitoring under the Convention.

The participants emphasized that the willingness to address environmental challenges and problems as well as the high expert potential demonstrated by Turkmenistan and other littoral states strengthened the belief that the Caspian Sea would remain one of the unique and diverse ecosystems on the planet.