Report from North Sea Commission to CPMR on observership carried out at OSPAR, October 24, 2005

Since June 2003 the CPMR is official observer to the OSPAR Commission. The OSPAR Commission administrates the OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic. This observership works in the same manner in which the North Sea Commission is observer to the North Sea Conference, i.e. the organisations can take part in meetings and comment on official documents, as well as provide documents of their own for the consideration of OSPAR and the NS Conference. The reason why CPMR is the relevant observer to OSPAR is that the OSPAR area of responsibility, the North-East Atlantic, contains many CPMR member Regions. However, the task of observing is carried out for CPMR by the NSC.

OSPAR´s work covers a very wide range of environmental issues and is carried out in a large number of very specialised Committees and working groups. (See attached documents ”OSPAR Commission organisation 2005” and ”O S P A R Commission work schedule 2005-2006 from website”.) The NSC – as all CPMR Commissions – has limited staff resources. Therefore the NSC is relying on experts provided by member Regions (or institutions in member Regions) to perform the observership in as many fora as possible. The Regions provide the working time of these experts, while the NSC and/or CPMR provides funding for travel and accomodation expenses.

To date the NSC has taken part in the following meetings, or commented documents with relevance to those meetings. Attached are written reports of the NSC observers (if available), as well as Summary Records of the respective meetings. (Document names are given under the heading of each meeting):

Biodiversity Committee, BDC, Workshop on Spatial Planning in the North Sea, Bruges, 16-20 February 2004

BDC, OSPAR guidelines on offshore wind energy
(ANNEX07_guidance wind farms 2003.doc)
(NSC on ospar wind energy guidelines final.doc)

BDC, workshop on CO2 sequestring, Trondheim, 26-27 October, 2004

BDC, workshop on spatial planning II, The Hague, 2-3 February, 2005
(brief report on spat. plan. workshop conclusions.doc)
(SPINS05 Report.doc)
(SPINS05_ANNEX3 - Suggestions for future work.doc)

Hazardous Substances Committee, HSC, Brussels, 5-8 April, 2005
(MK rev Report to NSC_OSPAR HSC2005.PDF)
(HSC2005 summary record.PDF)

for more information please contact
Mr. Per Hörberg
Co-ordinator, North Sea Commission Environment Group

Contact information::
Miljösekretariatet, Västra Götalandsregionen, Regionens Hus, Box 1726, SE-501 17 Borås, Sweden
Phone +46-(0)33-17 48 26, Fax: +46-(0)33-17 48 05, Mobile: +46-(0)709 954 369
e-mail: per.horberg@vgregion.se