Protection and conservation of species and habitats

19 January 2016

OSPAR's Intersessional Correspondence Group on the Protection of Species and Habitats (ICG-POSH) is meeting to focus on the implementation of the recommendations for action by Contracting Parties to reduce risks to species and habitats of concern in the North East Atlantic. The aim for this meeting is strategy – to start preparing the implementation plan that will help set the priorities for how to address all the actions that have been recommended (more than 400 in total), to have the biggest possible effect for the species and habitats in question.

ICG-POSH

OSPAR Ministers committed in 2010 to halt the decline of species and habitats, in particular to restore threatened and/or declining species and habitats by establishing measures to protect such species and habitats from the pressures of human activities (cf. §24 Bergen statement).

In order to progress this work, and on the basis of the OSPAR List of threatened and/or declining species and habitats agreed in 2008 (cf. Agreement 2008-6), there has been an extensive body of work to protect these species and habitats through the development of background documents and adopting measures.

There is a need to understand how these species and habitats are responding to pressures, and the measures that are being agreed to enhance their protection and conservation, in order to be in a position to deliver assessments that will provide a response to the objectives of the North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy i.e. to:

a. improve the status of threatened and/or declining species and habitats and ensure that they are effectively conserved, working, where appropriate, with other competent authorities.

b. ensure that the effects of human activities and pressures on the marine environment, individually or cumulatively, do not adversely affect species, habitats and ecosystems, in particular those on the OSPAR List of Threatened and/or Declining Species and Habitats.

These objectives can also serve the needs of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive and other relevant directives, both monitoring and assessment requirements and programmes of measures.

It is the objective of ICG-POSH to:

  1. ensure and improve the effective and efficient implementation of the species and habitat Recommendations;
  2. establish the process to implement those actions in the Recommendations for Contracting Parties to be undertaken whilst acting collectively within the framework of the OSPAR Commission;
  3. deliver the relevant products described under Theme B of the JAMP for, in close cooperation with EIHA, ICG-COBAM and ICG-MPA.
  4. ensure cross committee liaison where this is appropriate to the implementation of the Recommendations;
  5. identify opportunities for work with national/ international competent organisations whose mandates intersect with OSPAR with respect to the species and habitat Recommendations.
  6. advise on possible arrangements to review the OSPAR list (Agreement 2008/6) and background documents.

Roseate terns: Jorge Saliva