The Black Sea Ecosystem Recovery Programme:

Activities Related to the Management of Agricultural Pollution

Dr. Pat Reynolds

Project Funding

• PDF-B $0.35M • Phase 1 – 2002-2004 (i) GEF - $4M (ii) Co-financing - $4M

– TACIS - $2.80M– UNDP – $0.26M– UNEP - $0.06M– WMO - $0.02M– In-kind contribution - $0.86M (6 countries)

Contents of Presentation

• The ecological challenge

• UNDP-GEF project activities and strategies

• Relationship of project activities to the framework of EU action in the field of water policy

• Barriers to a legal and institutional framework to combat eutrophication in the Black Sea

• What is not known with certainty?– Diffuse agricultural sources and riverine inputs

• Demonstration projects

The Ecological Challenge

• The Black Sea is facing a Potential Ecological Disaster from Eutrophication:

– Ten fold drop in fish catches. From 26 to 6 viable species. Over $300 million/year decline from mid 1980s to 1990.

– Anchovy catches down 80% or 400,000 t/y

– Loss of 10,000 km2 of ecologically most valuable algae beds

– Increase of exotic species

– Tourism revenue losses (400 million $/year)

– Poor environmental conditions (over 20,000 water related illnesses)

• Severity of degradation will be aggravated with economic recovery - solution only possible on a co-operative regional basis

“The long-term goal in the wider Black Sea Basin is to take measures to reduce the loads of nutrients and hazardous substances discharged to such levels necessary to permit Black Sea ecosystems to recover to conditions similar to those observed in the 1960s.”

The Long-Term Goal

As an intermediate goal, urgent measures should be taken in the wider Black Sea Basin in order to avoid that the loads of nutrients and hazardous substances discharged into the Seas exceed those that existed in the mid 1990s.

(These discharges are only incompletely known.)

First adaptive management goal

Variation in observed area of NW shelf summer hypoxia with increasing loading of nitrogen fertiliser in the Danube basin

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Nf, Nitrogen fertiliser, million tons/year, averaged over the 7 years prior to each data point

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Reduce input levels to here

Inorganic fertiliser application rates in Romania

from 1950-1995

Year Nitrogen (tonne N/yr)

Phosphorous (tonne P/yr)

1950 2,600* 1,600 1960 24,700 46,800 1970 366,900 203,200 1980 646,300 389,400* 1985 674,800 342,000 1990 781,400 120,100 1992 359,800 56,100 1995 ~ 290,000 ~ 50,000

Total loads of nitrogen and phosphorus discharged from among Black Sea countries (1996)

SOURCES Nitrogen (kt/y)

Phosphorus (kt/y)

National Bulgaria 75.467 1.125 Georgia 1.585 0.435 Romania 45.373 0.528 Russia 13.491 1.037 Turkey 38.008 5.857 Ukraine 42.830 4.638 Total (national) 216.754 13.620 International Danube 345.660 25.440 Dnieper 11.180 3.970 Dniester 22.750 0.980 Don 7.048 3.386 Sea of Azov 43.900 3.100 Total (international) 430.538 36.876 Total 647.292 50.496 Source: BSEP 1997

Nutrient export from Romania 88-97

1988-1990 1991-1997 Nutrient source ktonne N/yr ktonne P/yr ktonne N/yr ktonne P/yr

Domestic waste 31 5.4 30 5.0 Agriculture 60-96 5-10 26-50 2.4 Industry 33 6 22 3.5 Atmosheric Dep.

16 - 14 -

Total 140 (100%) 21.4 (100%) 92 (-34.3%) 11.5 (-46.3%)

Categories of Diffuse sources• Agriculture

• Un-sewered population• Natural background erosion• Urban runoff• Forestry

- Industrial processes- Transport- Livestock farming- Inorganic fertiliser

• Atmospheric deposition

- Livestock- Arable farming

• Bird population?

Point sources• Sewered population

- Food processing- Fertiliser manufacturing- Detergent manufacturing?- Intensive livestock farming- Fish farming

• Urban runoff?• Landfills

• Sewage treatment works• Industry:

- Faecal material- Detergents

- Direct discharge- Discharge to sewer

How do nutrients behave in the Black Sea and how can we determine acceptable discharge

targets?• GEF funding research studies (4 cruises):

– Danube river input data remains poor, particularly with respect to dissolved organic nutrients and suspended material

– The role of sediment/ water fluxes on the NW shelf remains unclear

– The role of atmospheric deposition of nutrients is entirely unclear

– Mixing across the thermocline and horizontal mixing have been poorly evaluated

– Particulate flux from the water column is poorly understood

– There is much speculation on whether nitrate or phosphorus are limiting nutrients and whether or not the limitation is seasonally and spatially variable

– Are there signs of recovery of benthic systems?

– Insufficient knowledge of the status of coastal macroalgal communties

Objective of BSERP

Supporting Black Sea coastal countries, and their regional coordinating body, the Black Sea Commission for implementing a suite of harmonized legal and policy instruments for the recovery of the Black Sea large marine ecosystem, by developing mechanisms to:

– Control eutrophication,– Reduce discharges of certain hazardous

substances, in particular those that have the same sources with eutrophication

– Conserve biodiversity

Key project objectives related to agricultural pollution

Objective 2 - Regional actions for improving land-based activities and legislation to control eutrophication and for tackling emergent problems

Objective 4 - Introduction of new sectoral policies and laws and a system of indicators to monitor the effectiveness of measures to control eutrophication and hazardous substances

Objective 5 - Economic cost/benefit analysis of actions proposed in the sectoral master plans and national strategies for the control of nutrients and hazardous substances

Objective 6 - Assist the public in implementing activities to reduce eutrophication through a programme of grants for small projects and support to regional NGOs.

Objective 7 - Formulate proposals for market-based or alternative economic

instruments for limiting nutrient emissions and establish private-public sector partnerships for environmental protection in the Black Sea.

Objective 8 - A fishery exploited within its biologically safe limits and incorporating measures to protect ecologically sensitive areas

Project Strategy

• Capacity building for the national and regional institutions

• Developing sectoral master-plans to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus discharges,

• Supporting inter-sectoral co-ordination at the national and regional levels,

• Developing and implementing a set of indicators for monitoring the effectiveness of eutrophication control measures

• Strengthening of the information basis as a regional decision support system

• Promoting the use of economic instruments  

• Illustrating the environmental-economic costs and benefits of investing in nutrient reduction

• Restoration of critical habitats, in particular coastal wetlands and fish spawning and nursery areas,

• Facilitating the establishment of a sustainable fisheries management regime,

• Increasing public involvement through support to the stakeholder communities, small grants and environmental education

Project Strategy….

• Implementation of small scale demonstration projects for nutrient reduction,

• Establishing new public-private partnerships in the region,

• Networking between local administrations

Project strategy….

Common Purpose for the Protection of transitional and coastal waters between GEF intervention and the EU WFD and Marine

Strategy:

• To protect territorial and marine waters • To prevent further deterioration and to enhance the status of aquatic

ecosystems• To promote sustainable water use• To enhance protection and improvement of the aquatic environment

through the control of priority pollutants

Ultimately - to achieve concentrations in the marine environment near background for naturally occurring substances and close to zero for man-made synthetic substances

Relationship of GEF activities to EU WFD

GEF

Objectives EU WFD Articles

3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 16

2 Regional actions for land-based activities and for tackling emergent problems

4 Introduction of new sectoral policies and laws and a system of indicators

5 Economic cost/benefit analysis of actions proposed in the sectoral master plans

8 Incorporating measures to protect ecologically sensitive areas C

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• National Nutrient Reduction Action Plans– Situation in Black Sea riparian countries in

2000– Sources of pollution– Legal and administrative frameworks– Economic instruments applied– National action plan– Indicators

Approaches to nutrient control – point sources

• Increasing the population connected to sewer• N and P stripping at sewage treatment works• Increasingly tough discharge consents• Increasingly tough trade waste regulations for

discharge to sewer• IPPC – best available technology for industry (now

includes pigs and poultry)• Reduced-P or P-free detergents (economic

instruments)• Sediment traps (e.g. bankside fish farms)

Approaches to nutrient control – diffuse sources

• Codes of good agricultural practice• Maximum livestock densities• Maximum fertiliser application rates• Economic instruments – taxation of fertilisers• Changing agricultural practices (e.g. no clear-felling)• Set-aside (CAP)• Increased planting of buffer strips• Lower recommended fertiliser application rates• IPPC –atmospheric emission/ catalytic converters

Barriers to nutrient-related legal and policy

reform • Financial support and preparedness (training

mostly)

• Changing of the existing infrastructure (administrative, scientific, etc.) and especially the legal framework into a new operational structure

• Harmonisation of the wishes of interested parties, – national strategy versus local intrests;– industrial sector versus agricultural sector.

Weak links in legislation to control nutrients

• Implementation of current legislation is hampered by a lack of funds, notably in terms of monitoring/enforcement

• Legislation does not include standards for sediment quality.

• For emissions control, norms refer often to pollutant concentration limits but not to pollutant load limits

• Cost efficiency/cost benefit analysis to define what actions are likely to be the most cost-effective is a rather uncertain predictive science that relies heavily on the availability of information. This is often lacking.

• The data on which to base new legislation or measure the performance of existing legislation is often limited

Institutional Issues

Identified Problem Proposed Solutions

Poor access to National Project Coordinators, hampering ability of PIU to establish:

-linkage with national and local stakeholders -inter-ministerial committees for data and information gathering towards sectoral analysis and planning

Each Government to designate Country Team Leader

Establish a BSERP office in each country

PIU to provide full time financial support for CTL, Database Management Coordinator and Secretary at national level and Team Coordinator at local level

BSERP Phase 1 – Demonstration project

• Modeling of nutrient export in the Kamchia RB, Bulgaria – Buy-in from Ministry of Environment and

Waters– Full stakeholder participation from the start– Direct applicability to the needs of the River

Basin Commission

BSERP Phase 2 – Development of Rapid Assessment methodologies for point and diffuse

sources • Based on rapid assessment of point source

pollution developed by World Health Organisation

• Pollutant loads estimated rather than directly measured

• Alternative to monitoring programmes, which are time consuming, resource intensive & limited in scale (i.e. small catchments)

•For example, the amount of activity can be defined•by the area of land, number of people, or number of•livestock etc.

Estimation of pollutant loads:

•To calculate the load, the coefficient is multiplied•by the activity size:

•LOAD = COEFFICIENT * ACTIVITY SIZE

•Activity size is equivalent to the amount•of a particular activity

Example calculation: (nitrogen run-off, Malta, 1998)

1) Enter crop type : WHEAT

2) Enter area covered by this crop: 2200 (ha)

3) Standard N coefficient for wheat: 30 kg.-1ha.-1.yr-1

4) Load discharged from source: 30 * 2200 = 66 000 kg.yr-1

5) Enter soil type: SANDY

6) Enter precipitation rate: MEDIUM (1-3 mm per day)

7) Enter slope : MEDIUM

8) Exported load after leaving source: 66 000 * 1.33 * 1 *1 = 87 780 kg.yr-1

Rapid Assessment of diffuse pollutants available on the world wide web…

Key features of RAPS• Simple

• Comprehensive

• can be used with limited resources (aids transitional countries & regions with low data availability)

• Quantify & identify significant pollutant sources

• Scenario testing (e.g. test effectiveness of alternative pollution control options)

• loads are only indicative as expect large temporal & spatial variation in pollutant loads

Limitations with current model:

• Coefficients & data arising from temperate & developed regions (US & UK)

• Calculation of loads at the source only

• Transport & degradation of pollutants not fully addressed

• Comprehensive, but not comprehensive enough

New model for diffuse pollution:

DECISION SUPPORT TOOL, DST

•Global, large geographic areas•(requires extensive database)

• Couple with point source RAPS

• Estimates of error associated with the calculation of the load•(uncertainty & variability), plus verification in four catchments

• Improved output visualisation•(spatial mapping through GIS, as well as tables)

• Accounts for decay of pollutant load during transit from source to waterway (develop new coefficients)

SUMMARY….

1) Existing rapid assessment of pollution sources

RAPS model for point source pollution RAPS model for diffuse pollution

2) New model for assessing diffuse pollution sources

DST model for diffuse pollution- developed by end of year- to be tested in Kamchiya RB

Take home message to the farmer:

Discharge your Obligations