Environmental Impact of Human Activities

OSPAR’s Environmental Impacts of Human Activities Committee met in Copenhagen from 8 to 12 April 2019.

During a busy week EIHA finalised 3 assessments on beach litter, plastic particles in fulmar stomachs and impulsive noise. These assessments add extra data to assessments produced for OSPAR’s 2017 Intermediate Assessment and should be published on the assessment portal in the summer. A new indicator on ingestion of litter by turtles was also agreed.

Further work on OSPAR’s Marine Litter Regional Action Plan was also progressed in the form of a draft Recommendation and accompanying guidelines on education programmes for fishers, as well as a background document on key waste items from the fishing industry and aquaculture and a review of Best Available Technologies in urban wastewater treatment systems.

EIHA also progressed on a revised North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy (NEAES) for 2020-2030 devoting time to furthering a set of operational objectives on human pressures and activities to support the high-level strategic objectives proposed for the new 2020-2030 strategy.

For more information on EIHA work: https://www.ospar.org/work-areas/eiha

OSPAR's 2017 Intermediate Assessment: https://oap.ospar.org/en/ospar-assessments/intermediate-assessment-2017/

OSPAR's marine litter regional action plan: http://www.ospar.org/documents?v=34422