EUROWA-2:Promoting the project to regional agreement meetings around Europe

Authorities from the Baltic, North and Mediterranean Sea regions learned more about the EUROWA-2 project at their meetings during the first half of the year.

Sea Alarm, as EUROWA Secretariat, represented EUROWA at these online meetings, the first of which introduced EUROWA-2 to the Baltic countries at the meeting of the HELCOM Expert Working Group for Oiled Wildlife Response (EWG-OWR) in February. The second presentation was given at the Bonn Agreement’s Working Group on Operational, Technical and Scientific Questions Concerning Counter Pollution Activities (OTSOPA) meeting in May, and a short presentation was also made at the Barcelona Convention’s 14th REMPEC Focal Point Meeting, also held in May.

These meetings were important opportunities to highlight the ways the EUROWA-2 project will directly benefit European authorities. All three Regional Agreements provided letters of support for the EUROWA-2 project proposal in 2020, indicating their awareness of the relevance of the project to achieving their regional goals related to oiled wildlife preparedness and response. These goals are formally stated in the draft updated Baltic Sea Action Plan, the Bonn Agreement Strategic Action Plan (2019-25) and the draft Mediterranean Strategy for the Prevention of, and Response to, Marine Pollution from Ships (2022-31).

All three meetings were also informed of two upcoming workshops for European authorities, which will share educational tools for governments, and explore the topic of integrated management, an important issue as the different elements of oiled wildlife response operations should operate under the oversight of all authorities involved in a response, including at-sea and shoreline authorities.

EUROWA-2 will strengthen Europe’s capacity to deal with marine wildlife emergencies via mutual assistance. The training packages being developed under the project will benefit response preparedness regionally; while the new training package for sea turtle responders is especially important for Barcelona Convention countries in the Mediterranean.

The EUROWA-2 project team and network members will continue to promote project developments and activities that are of interest to European authorities and publish further news on this website and on EUROWA’s twitter account.