Over the last 30 years the once thriving Black Sea ecosystem has virtually collapsed. A massive increase in the volume of pollutants, most of it carried by rivers draining out of Central and Eastern Europe, has devastated animal and plant communities. The first move was to establish a new legal framework for Cupertino. Inspired by the Regional Seas Conventions which emerged after the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Environment and Development, representatives of the Black Sea countries drafted their own "Convention for the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution". This Convention was signed in Bucharest in April 1992, and ratified by all six legislative assemblies by early 1994. The "Bucharest Convention" includes a basic framework of agreement and three specific Protocols on: the control of land-based sources of pollution; dumping of waste, and; joint action in the case of accidents (such as oil spills). Its implementation will be overseen by a Commission with a permanent secretariat in Istanbul (the Istanbul Commission).

The Convention establishes rules, but it doesn’t set the goals, priorities and timetable needed to bring about environmental actions. For this reason, a Ministerial Declaration on the Protection of the Black Sea Environment was signed by all six Ministers of the Environment in Odessa in April 1993. Based largely upon the Agenda for the 21st Century adopted at the 1992 Rio Summit of World Heads of State, this innovative document sets the stage for three years of change.

The deteriorating situation also led to the establishment in 1993 of the Black Sea Environmental Programme (BSEP), backed by funding from the Global Environmental Facility, jointly managed by the UN Development Programme, the UN Environmental Programme and the World Bank, and also sponsored by the European Union’s Phare and Tacis programmes and other governments including the Netherlands, France, Japan and Austria and Canada.

On 31 October 1996 Environment Ministers from Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine met in Istanbul to sign the Black Sea Strategic Action Plan, the most comprehensive programmes ever undertaken to save one of the world’s most polluted seas.

The Strategic Action Plan is the product of three years of consultations and research. Although the surveys conducted and co-ordinated by the BSEP have confirmed that the Black Sea environment is severely damaged, they have also shown that the situation is far from hopeless. The Black Sea can still be saved.

Problems facing the Black Sea

In a period of only three decades, the Black Sea has suffered the catastrophic degradation of a major part of its natural resources. Increased loads of nutrients from rivers caused an overproduction of tiny phytoplankton that in turn blocked the light reaching the sea grasses and algae, essential components of the sensitive ecosystem of the north-western shelf. The entire ecosystem began to collapse. This problem, coupled with pollution and irrational exploitation of fish stocks, started a sharp decline in fisheries resources. To make matters worse, in the mid-1980s, a jellyfish-like species (Mnemiopsis leidyi), which was accidentally introduced to the Black Sea, invaded the Black Sea. Its diet included fish larvae and the tiny animals small fish feed upon. It quickly reached a total mass of 900 million tons (ten times the annual fish harvest from the entire world!).

But this is not the only problem. Poor planning has destroyed much of the aesthetic resources of the coastlines. Uncontrolled sewage pollution has led to frequent beach closures and considerable financial losses in the tourist industry. In some places, solid waste is being dumped directly in the sea or on valuable wetlands. Tanker accidents and operational discharges have often caused oil pollution. These problems have reached crisis proportion at a time when five of the Black Sea countries are facing an economic and social transition and therefore have difficulty in taking the necessary urgent remedial actions.

The resources of the Black Sea - and its problems - are shared by six coastal countries, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. Management of the Black Sea’s shared resources is the responsibility of these countries but part of the responsibility for controlling aquatic and airborne pollution should also be shared amongst the other eleven countries which have a major part of their territory in the Black Sea basin. Protection of the Black Sea cannot be achieved on a unilateral basis. Almost every use of the sea and coastal areas has the potential for affecting the well being of neighbouring countries. Joint management and protection of shared marine living resources is one of the few available options to countries bordering the Black Sea. There is a strong need for harmonising legal and policy objectives and for developing common strategies for investment in the control of pollution. Furthermore, only concerted international action can hope to do anything to protect the biological diversity of the Black Sea. [1]

Most common problems facing the implementation of ICZM in Black Sea coastal states

References