4. International Commitments

4. INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS

This Section briefly summarises international commitments which require monitoring of inland waters and the scope of their application in terms of the countries committed to meeting their requirements.

Within the EEA area, many requirements for monitoring arise from the European Commission. However, there are also many other international commitments which make monitoring requirements. Both categories are addressed in this report.

4.1. EU legislation and policies

4.1.1. Directives

Since the foundation of the European Community, several directives have been introduced to protect the quality of water resources, many of which contain monitoring requirements for inland waters. With a few exceptions (see Table 4.1), all Member States are required to implement the requirements made in these directives. The new Member States, i.e. Austria, Finland and Sweden, and the new Länder in Germany have, in some cases, been granted extended periods for implementation. Norway and Iceland are not members of the EU and are therefore not bound to meet the requirements of the directives, however, they have signed the EEA agreement obliging them to respect environmental standards.

As previously mentioned, the requirements made in the directives have been designed largely independently from each other. The Commission has, however, taken some initiatives to harmonise monitoring and reporting requirements in the Exchange of Information Decision (77/795/EEC as amended by Decision 86/574/EEC), and in the Reporting Directive (91/692/EEC) as detailed in Council Decision (92/446/EEC).

In the Exchange of Information Decision, Member States are asked to use a common procedure to exchange the results on the quality of fresh surface waters. It specifies measuring stations (covering the main rivers in each Member State), a list of determinands to be monitored, as well as, briefly, methods of analysis. It also recommends intercalibration exercises and gives a simple format for the data to be reported (unit and significant figures).

The Reporting Directive requires the use of standard questionnaires (as provided in Council Decision (92/446/EEC)) as a framework within which reports are to be submitted to the Commission, mainly on the implementation of certain EU directives. The objective is to achieve harmonised information on the monitoring undertaken in respect of EU directives rather than to harmonise monitoring requirements.

Table 4.1 European legislation requiring monitoring of inland waters

Notes:

a Monitoring only at list of sampling stations

b Monitoring only in designated areas

c No specific monitoring requirements as such although some site specific investigation sampling may be required for purposes of identifying the appropriate control measures and auditing their effectiveness

d Initial analysis of source waters to be carried out before exploitation and to investigate problems and resolve pollution during exploitation

e No monitoring requirement but harmonised format for reporting results of monitoring of several directives

NI Northern Ireland

ns Not specified

NVZs Nitrate vulnerable zones

At the time of submitting this report it should be noted that the information on monitoring requirements had not been validated by the Walloon and Brussels regions of Belgium.

A brief summary of the objectives for each directive is given in Table 4.2 below.

Table 4.2 Summary of objectives and purposes of European legislation

Table 4.2 continued

4.1.2. Other policies

There are other policies instigated within the EU that have or will have a potential effect on the monitoring requirements of water resources in the EEA area. These are briefly outlined below.

Groundwater action and water management programme

A Ministerial seminar held at the Hague in 1991, on the long term deterioration of the quality and quantity of water resources, emphasised the special significance of groundwater in the water cycle and in ecosystems, and as a source for drinking water. As a result the European Council called for Community Action and required that a detailed action programme be drawn up for comprehensive protection and management of groundwater as part of an overall policy on water protection. This led to a draft proposal for a groundwater action and water management programme (GAP) which requires a programme of actions to be implemented by the year 2000 at both national and EU levels, aiming at sustainable management and protection of freshwater resources. The draft proposal develops the basic quality standards for groundwater adding at the same time a quantitative dimension to water management. National action programmes should aim for full implementation by 2000 and should address elements such as mapping and monitoring of quality and quantity of freshwater resources, identification and designation of protection zones for areas of particular ecological interest and sensitivity, including present and future resources for drinking water and other resources. Water quality and quantity should be appropriately monitored in order to provide Member States with sufficient information to allow them to follow developments in the quality and quantity of aquifers and in particular to detect early signs of deterioration from leaching of dangerous substances towards groundwater reservoirs

Fifth environmental action programme

The United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro focused the world’s attention on the need to promote environmentally sustainable development. Agenda 21 was one of the agreements arising from the Rio Conference and sets out a comprehensive programme of actions for achieving sustainable development, sector by sector for the next century. National strategies and action plans are the key to the implementation of Agenda 21. The fifth environmental action programme, published in March 1992, represents an important starting point for the implementation of Agenda 21 in the EU.

The fifth environmental action programme stated that community policies must aim at:

• preventing pollution of fresh and marine surface waters and groundwater with particular emphasis on prevention at source;
• restoring natural ground and surface waters to an ecologically sound condition, thus ensuring a suitable source for extraction of drinking water; and,
• ensuring that water demand and water supply are brought into equilibrium on the basis of more rational use and management of water resources.

Long term to be achieved by the year 2000 are also given. These are in line with the programme of action outlined in the Hague Declaration and the subsequent GAP. The objectives of these targets include for groundwater: the maintenance of uncontaminated aquifers; the prevention of further contamination of contaminated aquifers; and, the restoration of contaminated aquifers for drinking water. For surface freshwaters the objective is to maintain a high ecological quality with a biodiversity corresponding as much as possible to the unperturbed state of a given water and for marine waters, a reduction of discharges of all environmentally hazardous substances to levels consistent with high standards of ecological quality. For marine waters there is also an action for surveillance of geographic zones with appropriate monitoring techniques. It is also likely that specific monitoring would be required in order to achieve the other objectives, particularly for groundwater where relatively little monitoring is apparently undertaken at present.

The Dobríš report

The Pan European Conference of Environment Ministers held at Dobríš Castle in 1991 called for the preparation of a State of the Environment report for Europe and invited the European Commission to take responsibility for the work. This request recognised the need for the compilation of reliable and comparable data in order develop effective policies for Europe’s environment.

The report identified a number of important and significant information gaps. In particular, the report noted:

• the absence of regional water resource statistics so that the present rates and trends of water abstraction by source and economic sectors are poorly known;
• an almost complete lack of comparable and reliable data on groundwater quantity and quality;
• a lack of comparable and reliable data on surface water quality across Europe making a comparison very difficult, in particular data were lacking on small rivers and lakes, whilst data on organic micropollutants, metals and radioactivity were patchy and incomplete. Biological assessments of river quality are carried out using a variety of methods and hence were not comparable;
• there is no pan-European water quality database either for freshwater or for marine water and reporting schemes differ markedly between countries;
• with regard to marine waters and seas there is very little comparable data on water quality and biology available for the White sea and Barents sea, and estimates of pollutants loads from different human activities and natural sources in general are not available; and,
• there is also a need for a unified procedure for estimating land-based emissions to seas so that comparison of contaminant load estimates between different seas can be made.

The Dobríš report noted problems associated with the aquatic environment in Europe (not only the EEA area but also eastern Europe). These included water scarcity problems in southern European countries, over-exploitation of groundwater (65% of Europe’s population is supplied from groundwater), nitrate problems in north-western Europe, pesticides in soil water, river and lake eutrophication and acidification of rivers and lakes. It also defined European prominent environmental problems which have potential implications on the monitoring required (or at least the data and information required) to define and assess temporal and spatial differences. Those that effect water resources include: climate change (effects on hydrological cycle, sea level rise, salination of freshwaters, effects on aquatic ecosystems); acidification (effects on lakes, rivers and streams); and, the management of freshwater (water availability, water quality, groundwater pollution, eutrophication, organic pollution (including pathogens), acidification, physical changes).

4.2. Other international agreements

There are a large number of international agreements concerning surface waters, however, not all of these make monitoring requirements (see Appendix A.2). Many agreements aim to protect a specific water body and are made between countries within the catchment of that water body. For large rivers and seas this can involve many countries, for example, the agreements made at the North Sea Conferences are made between all countries bordering the North Sea, i.e., Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK. By contrast, there are many agreements which exist between just two countries. Thus the scope of application for international commitments varies greatly. For the purposes of this report, they have been divided into three categories:

• multi-national commitments, i.e. between three or more EEA countries;
• international commitments where more than one party has signed the EEA agreement; and,
• international commitments where only one party has signed the EEA agreement.

Harmonisation with the latter type of agreement may be difficult because of the differing priorities of parties outside of the EEA area. This review therefore concentrates on the first two categories.

A brief summary of the objectives for those agreements which require monitoring and which fall into category A, i.e. involving three or more EEA countries, is given in Table 4.3. A list of all international agreements which require monitoring is given in Table 4.4 which also indicates the countries obliged to meet the requirements laid down.

There are also other international organisations that some, if not all, EEA Member States are members of, or co-operate with, that either instigate monitoring programmes, or collect, collate, report and disseminate national monitoring data and information. These are discussed briefly below and the objectives of those which make monitoring requirements are summarised in Table 4.3.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has developed a questionnaire on the State of the Environment which since 1988 has been jointly presented with that from EUROSTAT. Before 1992 the OECD concentrated on water abstraction and water consumption (with little breakdown by activities), pollution connected to sewage treatment plants, total polluted water discharged (without reference to its origin), and data on surface water quality for sample stations at the borders of Member States. In addition, EUROSTAT collects data on water quality indicators for selected rivers and lakes. In the last revision of the now joint EUROSTAT/OECD questionnaire on inland waters (during 1990-1991) more detailed questions on water resources and waste water treatment were added. In the questions concerning water abstraction, consumption and discharge, a limited breakdown into activities has been added and determinands have been redefined.

The United Nations established an Environment Programme (UNEP) to act as ‘a focal point for environmental action and co-ordination within the United Nation’s system’ within which a Regional Seas Programme (now the Oceans and Coastal Areas Programme) was adopted in 1978.

An international group of experts, GESAMP, sponsored by the United Nations, collects monitoring data and information from different states so that it can to report on, and assess, current marine environmental quality issues and provide scientific advice on marine pollution problems to the sponsoring agencies and to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (unece) has promoted international co-operation on water issues for over four decades. To meet the dual challenges of sustainable use of water and maintenance of acceptable environmental quality, the unece has adopted a number of declarations and decisions resulting from the work of its committee on water problems. These declarations and decisions are intended to provide guidance to UNECE member governments in formulating and implementing water management policies and should assist in fostering co-operation among unece Member States. The unece has recently developed (1992) the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes. The Convention has been signed by 25 European countries as well as by the EU, and will come into force 90 days after it has been ratified by 16 of these countries. The European Commission has made a proposal for a Council Decision (COM(93)271 final), which, if adopted would ratify the Union’s signature of the Convention. The Convention will require establishment of programmes for monitoring the conditions of transboundary waters, surface and groundwaters.

The Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution also has monitoring activities for water in two subgroups, namely:

• surface water: international co-operative programme on acidification of lakes and rivers (ICP-Waters);
• surface and groundwater: international co-operative programme on integrated monitoring of ecosystem effects (ICP Integrated monitoring).

Table 4.3 Summary of objectives and purposes on international agreements between three or more EEA countries

Notes: 1 A list of the full names for international agreements is given in Appendix A, Table A.2

a The requirements for monitoring marine water quality under the Oslo Convention were consolidated with those of the Paris Convention in 1978 in the joint monitoring programme (JMP). This is dealt with under North Sea (Paris) 1974. The JMP will be superseded by the Joint Assessment and Monitoring Programme (JAMP) in the future under OSPAR 1992.