What's New @ Ramsar

Report on two Budapest meetings, February 2002

The Danube Convention's Ecological Expert Group is up and running

In early 2001, an ad hoc Ecological Expert Group was set up by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) and met for the first time in Budapest. Since then, the 4th Plenary Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Danube River Protection Convention (DRPC) established this "ECO Expert group" firmly until the end of 2004. One year after their first meeting, representatives of all twelve signatory states (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia) met on 25-26 February 2002, again in Budapest, to adopt an ambitious work programme under their newly elected chairman, Mr Gabor Magyar of the Hungarian Ministry of the Environment. Dr Gerhard Sigmund, of Ramsar's Austrian administrative authority prepared the meeting agenda in his capacity as vice-chair.

The group decided to establish rapidly an inventory of protected areas in the floodplains of the Danube and its main tributaries, as required by the EU Water Framework Directive. The group will also monitor the national projects for wetland and floodplain restoration under the Joint Action Programme of the Danube River Protection Convention, and its expert members will make proposals for activities to be included in a proposed EU Interreg project, covering the Danube basin. WWF International's Danube-Carpathian programme proposed its services to prepare such a multilateral project, providing a opportunity for co-financing of the wetland and floodplain restoration activities listed in the Joint Action Programme, covering several well-known Ramsar Sites (Lonjske Polje, Kopacki Rit, etc.), cf. the attached meeting report (PDF).

The next meeting of the group is scheduled for 9-10 September 2002 in the Danube Floodplain National Park (a Ramsar Site) in Austria. Among others, the European Commission, ECNC, WWF, and the Ramsar Bureau participated as observers, the latter presenting the River Basin Initiative, run jointly by the Convention on Biodiversity and Wetlands, as a useful interlocutor and partner for the group.

Biodiversity in Europe, an intergovernmental preparatory meeting under the umbrella of PEBLDS

The Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS) was adopted by the first Ministerial Conference "Environment for Europe" in Sofia in 1995 and has since coordinated and furthered an impressive list of continent-wide activities. In March 2000, a group of European countries organised in Riga a Pan-European regional preparatory meeting for COP5 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, held some months later in Australia. Building on the success of this first forum on biodiversity themes at Pan-European level, Hungary offered to host a second conference on "Biodiversity in Europe" on 24-28 February 2002 in Budapest, under the umbrella of PEBLDS. The conference benefited from the presence and advice by several ministers and high-level officials. It focused on the following agenda items of the forthcoming CBD-COP6, to be held in April 2002 in The Hague: forest biological diversity, invasive alien species, financial resources and mechanisms for biodiversity, indicators, monitoring and the Clearing House Mechanism, the Strategic Plan for CBD and the implementation of the convention. The Budapest conference produced recommendations for Europe to be tabled at CBD-COP6 (cf. attached chairman's conclusions of the conference). They state notably in paragraph 32 that "practical collaboration should be pursued, for example through adoption and implementation of the third Joint Work Plan of the CBD and the Ramsar Convention".

The "Biodiversity in Europe" conference was followed by a PEBLDS Strategy Council meeting dealing with business matters and the Strategy's rolling work programme, prepared by the joint secretariat of the Council of Europe and UNEP's Regional Office for Europe. A lively discussion was held on how to integrate best biodiversity concerns into the agenda of the next ministerial conference "Environment for Europe" to be held 21-26 May 2003 in Kyiv, as Peter Skoberne from the Slovenian Environment Agency, chairman of PEBLDS, was going to Kyiv the next day for a preparatory meeting with the Ukrainian authorities.

For further information about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, please contact the Ramsar Convention Bureau, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail ramsar@ramsar.org). Posted 6 March 2002, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.