Environment ministers meet in Cairo to improve the state of the Mediterranean Sea
The worrying state of the Mediterranean Sea and the measures needed to protect the marine environment will be addressed in Cairo on 20.11.2006 by environment ministers from the Mediterranean region. The Cairo meeting is the first such event outside the EU in the Southern Mediterranean State. About twenty ministers will attend, representing EU member states and other coastal countries. The meeting will be chaired jointly by the Egyptian Environment Minister Maged George, Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas from the European Commission, and Jan-Erik Enestam, the Environment Minister of Finland, the country currently holding the EU Presidency.
The meeting aims to agree a timetable for countries' commitments to implement the measures within the Horizon 2020 Programme for the protection of the Mediterranean Sea, which was agreed a year ago. Horizon 2020 was prepared in co-operation with international organizations, international financial institutions and NGOs, who should all be closely involved in the programme's implementation, together with commercial enterprises and local citizens.
The ministers will adopt a declaration urging all the region's countries to intensify their efforts to protect the Mediterranean.
Schedules are required for four main areas of action within Horizon 2020:
- reductions in polluting emissions of industrial and residential wastewater, and the related funding
- strengthening environmental legislation and administration in the Mediterranean countries
- intensified research
- the definition of indicators to help assess the impacts of the Horizon 2020 Programme
Finnish Environment Minister Jan-Erik Enestam stresses that even though Europe's seas differ greatly from each other, coastal countries around one sea can still benefit from the experiences of countries bordering other seas. In Cairo, Enestam will present Finland's own experiences working to protect another important but troubled European sea - the Baltic.
The meeting will also examine the EU's new marine strategy and proposed legislation due to be agreed at a ministerial-level Environment Council meeting in December. The new EU legislation aims to ensure that the EU's marine waters will have a "good environmental status" by 2021. The Commission's proposals stress the need to adopt a comprehensive "ecosystem approach" in the protection of the marine environment. This involves examining all human activities and their impacts on the marine environment, according to conditions in each sea.
The poor ecological state of the Mediterranean Sea represents a serious threat to the health of the 143 million people who live around its shores, and many important livelihoods such as fishing and tourism. It has been estimated that environmental problems could already be reducing the gross national product of some North African countries by as much as 3%.
The international Barcelona Convention for the protection of the Mediterranean Sea against pollution was signed in 1976, but in spite of related efforts the state of the sea has subsequently worsened, and sensitive marine ecosystems are under increasing pressure. About 80% of the pollution burdening the Mediterranean originates from releases of industrial and household wastewater. Other significant threats include intense shipping, and the rapidly increasing coastal development. Forecasts indicate that half of the entire Mediterranean coastline will be built up by 2025.
For more information:
Ms Eija Lumme, Counsellor, Finnish Ministry of
the Environment; tel. +358 50 364 7358
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