HELCOM maintains its position as the most advanced Regional Agreement in Europe when it comes to oiled wildlife preparedness and response policy. This year, Expert Working Group Meetings have continued, an online seminar on cross border cooperation in wildlife incidents was held and a number of important proposals have been discussed and adopted by HELCOM Response.
In 2020, as part of our ongoing work to provide information on oiled wildlife response preparedness in all the coastal countries of the world, we updated 11 Country Wildlife Response Profiles (Mozambique, China, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Vietnam, Panama, Singapore, Romania, Spain and the USA) and created new profiles for Lebanon, our 107th, and Malta, our 108th.
Sea Alarm has played an active role in motivating European Coastal States to explore the issue of Oiled Wildlife Response and Preparedness via the three major Regional Agreements: “Bonn”, “HELCOM” and “Barcelona”. This article provides an overview of these efforts, and what has been achieved over the years.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, conferences everywhere are being cancelled, however, the Arctic Preparedness Platform for Oil Spill and Other Environmental Accidents (APP4SEA) elected to hold a Twitter conference, at which Sea Alarm was an invited participant.
We are pleased to announce that our MoU with the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC) has been extended for a further two years.
In February 2020, Sea Alarm’s Hugo Nijkamp attended the 27th HELCOM Response meeting in Vejle, Denmark where the integration of all aspects of at sea response, shoreline response and wildlife response was a key topic.
Sea Alarm recently presented at the annual meetings of three Regional Sea Conventions on the importance of the EUROWA project and the Self-Assessment Tool in improving oiled wildlife response preparedness.
Sea Alarm’s participation in HELCOM RESPONSE concentrates around various topics intended to ensure wildlife response is well-integrated into overall oil spill response in the Baltic region.
In cooperation with the Swedish Coast Guard, Sea Alarm facilitated the use of the Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) by the Contracting Parties of the Bonn Agreement.
The Expert Working group on Oiled Wildlife Response (EWG-OWR), which Sea Alarm chairs, recently held its 10th meeting.
Sea Alarm is pleased to announce that it has recently renewed its MoU with REMPEC, formalising plans to continue their collaboration for a further two years.
In October 2017, the HELCOM Expert Working Group on Oiled Wildlife Response organized a three-day event which included a working group meeting, wildlife response manager training and a stakeholder exchange of current activities and good practices.