OSPAR EIHA Meeting March 2021
The aim of these discussions are twofold. First an assessment of continuous noise must be made for the upcoming Quality Status Report in 2023 (QSR2023). The first step to do this is to adopt a Common Indicator to describe the approach to assessing continuous noise. The Jomopans project served as a pilot to detail this approach and to generate examples for the North Sea. The proposed indicator had the support of most of the participating Contracting Parties (countries). Jomopans already prepared a preliminary assessment from the Jomopans results, which form the basis for the assessment that is to be finalised in 2021. EIHA supported this assessment and discussed the use of this information in the policy towards continuous underwater noise.
A second topic for EIHA was the implementation of an operational monitoring programme for the North Sea. A major deliverable of Jomopans is the Implementation Plan that was presented to EIHA. In this plan EIHA is named as a steering committee for the monitoring programme and ICG Noise as the executive working group. The Implementation Plan also proposed to start a transition phase to safeguard the results from Jomopans (like standards, data, maps and GES Tool) as well as make detailed arrangement for a future joint monitoring programme. This plan was unanimously supported by EIHA.
OSPAR is so named because of the original Oslo and Paris Conventions ("OS" for Oslo and "PAR" for Paris) that merged into OSPAR.