North Sea Conference (Hansard, 19 June 1995)

§ Mr. Gummer

The fourth international conference for the protection of the North sea was held in Esbjerg, Denmark on 8 to 9 June 1995. Ministers and senior officials from Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, together with the members of the European Commission responsible for the environment, took part, under the chairmanship of the Danish Environment and Energy Minister, Mr. Svend Auken. I represented the United Kingdom.

Since so much progress has been made since the third North sea conference, in 1990, in converting policy 131W commitments into binding international agreements and European legislation, the nature of the conference was different from its predecessors. It was more a question of reviewing progress and fine-tuning than of breaking new ground.

The progress report for the conference showed how difficult it is to compare what is happening in the different states because of different methods of measuring or estimating the basic data. We therefore agreed to put emphasis in future on getting transparent, reliable and comparable reports on what is actually happening, making the fullest possible use of work in other international bodies.

The most important problem facing the North sea that was identified by the recent quality status report was the impact of over-fishing. We achieved a commitment to the development and strict enforcement of a system of controls for fish stocks of all kinds, including the industrial fisheries, to keep exploitation rates within safe biological limits. Measures will now be brought forward in the appropriate forums to implement this commitment. We also agreed that North sea Fisheries and Environment Ministers will meet before the end of 1996 to review the progress of these measures.

We also agreed to ask the Oslo and Paris Commission for the Protection of North East Atlantic to assess what measures are needed to improve the protection of wildlife in the areas beyond territorial waters—territorial waters being already covered by the EC birds and habitats directives—and to work out how best to harmonise such measures by the different North sea states.

Since the 1990 North sea conference, the European Community has adopted measures which provide a comprehensive framework for controlling hazardous substance. At Esbjerg, we agreed on various actions within that framework to give priority to certain specific problems connected with hazardous substances. We also discussed the setting of a target for the cessation of all inputs of hazardous substances to the North sea within one generation—that is, 25 years. It made clear that the United Kingdom shares the ideal of such aims but does not consider them currently practicable.

We confirmed support for the adoption and implementation by OSPAR of a strategy to combat and prevent eutrophication of the sea. Some North sea states wanted to see the whole of the North sea treated as a sensitive area for the purposes of the EC urban waste water treatment directive and its catchment as a vulnerable zone for the purposes of the EC nitrates directive, which would imply additional investment in sewage treatment to remove nutrients, and additional restrictions on agriculture. France and the United Kingdom took the view that the implementation of the Directives as they stand will address the problems that exist and that the suggested blanket approach would waste resources by installing plant and imposing restrictions that would have no practical effect on eutrophication problems.

We reached agreement on how to proceed on the creation of a special area in the North sea under the Marpol convention to control discharges of oil from shipping; on completing the work on tightening the Marpol annex on air pollution from shipping to the problems of sulphur oxides in the North sea.

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To reduce the impact of the offshore oil and gas industry, we agreed to ask OSPAR to revise its guidance on the management of produced water, to limit the use of oil-based muds to cases where this is necessary for geological or safety reasons and to get OSPAR to adopt a harmonised mandatory control system for the use and discharge of chemicals offshore. Some North sea states expressed their concern about the decision to permit the disposal of the Brent Spar at sea. I explained the reasons why we considered this the best practicable environmental option and reminded them that we were following the procedure agreed by all North sea states in 1992. France, Norway and the United Kingdom recorded their reasons for rejecting a commitment to dispose of all disused offshore installations on land; the other North sea states, which who do not have to consider the disposal of deep-sea installations, recorded their commitments to land disposal of all offshore installations.

We confirmed our commitment to the safety fundamentals for the management of radioactive waste adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in March and agreed to support the IAEA work to seek agreement for a global convention on this subject.

Finally, we agreed that Norway should host the fifth North sea conference in 2000 to 2002, but that this should be much more closely integrated with OSPAR ministerial meetings.