Recommendation on oiled wildlife response planning adopted

At the recent Ministerial Meeting in Moscow, Ministers from all contracting parties to the Helsinki Convention have adopted a new Recommendation called “Integrated oiled wildlife response planning in the Baltic Sea Area”. This Recommendation was developed by Sea Alarm in close cooperation with Estonia and WWF-Finland. Recommendations under the Helsinki Convention are not legally binding, but they are considered as strong incentives and most of the Contracting Parties will act to become compliant with their contents. The new Recommendation further completes the instruments that Helcom has been putting into place over the last few years. Most important is the new amended Helcom Response Manual that was published last December into which aspects of wildlife response are now integrated. This means that Contracting Parties can now use the instruments of the Manual to request and offer mutual assistance in case of an oiled wildlife incident. The texts of the proposed amendments to the Manual were also developed by Sea Alarm, Estonia and WWF Finland. The text of the new Recommendation can be found within the HELCOM Recommendations pages.