Ospar Commission (Hansard, 30 July 1998)

§ Mr. Baker
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on the outcome of the Ospar meeting in Sintra, Portugal. [52713]
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§ Mr. Llew Smith
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on the outcome of the ministerial conference of the Ospar Commission in Portugal. [52752]

§ Mr. Meacher
The first Ministerial meeting of the Ospar Commission for the protection of the marine environment of the North East Atlantic successfully reached agreement on a wide range of issues, thereby laying the foundation for an agreed international programme of work to implement the Ospar Convention.
We agreed a decision to end the potential opt-out for France and the United Kingdom on the dumping of radioactive waste. We adopted a new annexe to the Convention to authorise the Commission to adopt programmes and measures to control human activities that can have an adverse impact on the marine environment, with safeguards to ensure that there is no duplication or contradiction of work in other international forums, especially in respect of the management of fisheries. We adopted a binding decision to ban the dumping of all steel installations. This decision also bans the dumping of concrete installations and leaving both steel and concrete installations in place, but provides for possible derogations for sea-disposal of concrete installations and leaving in place the footings of steel installations over 10,000 tonnes. Consideration of the possibility of such derogations is subject to agreed assessment and international consultation procedures.
Looking ahead, we adopted long-term strategies to guide the work of the Commission on: hazardous substances (where the ultimate aim will be concentrations in the marine environment near background values for naturally occurring substances and close to zero for man-made synthetic substances, and the goal for 2020 will be to make every endeavour to move towards the target of cessation of discharges, emissions and losses by the date); radioactive substances (where the ultimate aim will be concentrations in the marine environment near background values for naturally occurring substances and close to zero for artificial radioactive substances; in achieving this objective, we shall take into account legitimate uses of the sea, technical feasibility and radiological impacts to man and biota; the goal for 2020 will be the reduction of discharges, emissions and losses to levels where the additional concentrations in the marine environment above historic levels, resulting from such discharges, emissions and losses, are close to zero); eutrophication (where the aim is to eliminate eutrophication where it occurs in the North East Atlantic and to prevent further occurrences); and the protection of ecosystems and biological diversity (where the first aim will be the entry into force of the new Annexe, and the identification of human activities that need to be addressed under it, and the preparation of programmes and measures to do so, along with promoting the establishment of a network of marine protected areas).
We also agreed, now that the decision on the disposal of disused offshore installations has been adopted, to develop a similar strategy, for adoption at next year's meeting of the Commission, on setting environmental goals for the offshore oil and gas industry and establishing improved management mechanisms to achieve them.
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Finally, we approved the work on the production of a Quality Status Report on the North East Atlantic by 2000 to provide a sound, scientific basis for identifying and prioritising future tasks and for revising the strategies at the next Ministerial meeting of the Commission in 2003.
A copy of the Sintra Statement, summing up the conclusions of the Ministers, is being put in the Library.
The agreements which we reached at Sintra are good for the environment, good for jobs and good for the UK's reputation abroad, as underlining, in the World Year of the Oceans, our commitment to protecting our common heritage in the oceans.