OSPAR meets in Dublin to discuss eutrophication

27 January 2020

Walking through Dublin’s Phoenix Park surrounded by morning mists to the beautiful and historic setting of Farmleigh House was a wonderful way to begin each busy day of the Eutrophication expert group (ICG-Eut) meeting this year. Ireland kindly hosted us at Farmleigh, which is the official Irish State Guesthouse and we had an opportunity to tour it and see photographs of Royalty, Presidents and Primeministers who have stayed there.

It was a lovely setting in which the eutrophication experts worked hard for four long days and evenings; there was a lot to do.

Michelle Devlin (United Kingdom) is the new Co-convenor and she was warmly welcomed by the experts. Michelle and Hans Ruiter (the Netherlands) co-chaired a very full meeting.

High on the agenda was revising the approach for assessing eutrophication status in the OSPAR maritime area, the “Common Procedure”. The plan is to better harmonise the way eutrophication is assessed by all Contracting Parties. To do this, OSPAR is using ICES’ expertise to develop a semi-automated tool called COMPEAT, the Common Procedure Eutrophication Assessment Tool. In parallel, the new approach will be captured in a comprehensive revision of OSPAR Agreement 2013-08 that describes the Common Procedure process.

OSPAR’s 2020 Ministerial Meeting where the new North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy 2020-2030 will be launched is rapidly approaching. So, in parallel with all OSPAR’s expert groups and Committees, ICG-Eut refined the text of the draft eutrophication objectives that will form part of the ‘Clean Seas’ section of the Strategy.

OSPAR’s next Quality Status Report (QSR) will be published in 2023 and the lead authors are already developing the eutrophication assessments that will contribute to the QSR. A big ‘thank you’ to the four volunteer Contracting Parties who are the authors of the suite of assessments; we can’t do it without them

You can find out more from the meeting report.