PURPOSE : to approve on behalf of the Community the new Annex to the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR).
COMMUNITY MEASURE : Council Decision concerning the approval, on behalf of the Community, of the new Annex V to the Convention for the protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic on the protection and conservation of the ecosystems and biological diversity of the maritime area and the corresponding Appendix 3. (2000/340/EC)
CONTENT : the Community has been a Contracting Party to the Convention for the protection of the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) since 1997. The aim of the OSPAR Convention is to prevent and eliminate pollution and to protect the maritime area against the harmful effects of human activities.
Its new Annex V was approved by the Contracting Parties at the meeting of the OSPAR Commission in Sintra (Portugal) on 22/23 July 1998. It states that the necessary measures shall be taken to protect and conserve the ecosystems and the biological diversity of the maritime area and to restore, where practicable, marine areas which have been adversely affected. The Contracting Parties shall cooperate in adopting programmes and measures for those purposes for the control of the human activities identified by the application of the criteria listed in Appendix 3. The criteria to be used for identifying human activities are the extent, intensity and duration of the human activity; actual and potential adverse effects of the human activity on specific species, communities, habitats and specific ecological processes as well as the irreversibility or durability of these effects.
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