Programme Cooperation Agreement 2012 – 2013

management practices are threatening the marine envi- ronment and coordination between marine planning pro- cesses is lacking, GRID-Arendal plays an important role in introducing “Ecosystem-based Management” (EbM) to the whole region.

agement Programme. The transboundary water basin of Drukšiai/Drisviaty Lake is shared by three countries: Lithu- ania, Belarus and Latvia. The lake is part of a national park and is included in protected nature reserves and NATURA 2000 network sites, which are fully or partly protected by national laws. At the same time the basin is an environ- mental and security hot spot of high concern, especially in the region of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) with its nuclear waste storage and repository facilities and the newly proposed Visaginas NPP. In addition, the national boundaries represent barriers for implementation of a ba- sin-wide approach and integration of various water man- agement aspects. In 2012, an official Drukšiai/Drisviaty Lake Basin Management Programme (DLB MP) website and mapping application was launched. The tool has been shared with all three basin countries and is intended to stimulate information exchange between the stakeholders (governments, academia, and NGOs) of the basin. Another example is the Dniester River Basin, shared by Moldova and Ukraine, which is the fifth largest trans- boundary basin in the Black Sea region. GRID-Arendal has been managing the Information Working Group of Dniester projects, and assisting the two governments in the development and negotiations of the Dniester Treaty, signed on 29 November 2012. The achievements of the Dniester projects include improved cooperation and coordination between health authorities in the re- gion responsible for the quality of drinking water. Trans- boundary cooperation has been established to conserve biodiversity, including the management of fish stocks, improved sharing and management of information on the basin, and increased awareness among stakeholders and the public about the value of the water resources in the Dniester Basin and the threats they face. An on-going component aims to reduce vulnerability to floods. GRID- Arendal’s substantive contribution has included the de- velopment of the ‘Geoportal of the Dniester River Basin’ and production of the Environmental Atlas launched in November 2012. Five countries’ cooperation is the focus of GRID-Arendal’s support to the Tehran Convention, the countries sharing the Caspian Sea: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan. For the last three years, GRID-Arendal has supported the Tehran Convention through providing staff to the Interim Secretariat, supporting regional assess- ments and conducting the Caspian Sea State of the Envi- ronment (SoE) report adopted by the Third Conference of the Parties (COP3). The Caspian SoE report was finalized and circulated in 2012. During this biennium, the Interim Secretariat assisted with the preparations for COP4 held in Moscow in 2012 and with the “Protocol on the Protec- tion of the Caspian Sea against Pollution from Land-based Sources and Activities”, which was finalized and adopted at COP4. The web-based Caspian Environmental Informa- tion Center (CEIC), designed by GRID-Arendal, serves as a communication tool for the Secretariat of the Tehran Con-

Transboundary waters

GRID-Arendal is involved in several regions, particularly in Africa and Eurasia, engaging with countries which have complicated relationships with each other but share com- mon waters, such as rivers, lakes and/or seas. For ex- ample, transboundary rivers form crucial lifelines for the supply of energy, transport and irrigation for agriculture in many countries. Several transboundary agreements over water resources already exist and provide excellent opportunities for international peaceful collaboration and improved natural resource management. In 2013, GRID-Arendal published the Zambezi River Basin Atlas of our Changing Environment , in cooperation with the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre’s environment institute, the India Musokotwane Environ- ment Resource Centre for Southern Africa. Eight countries in Southern Africa (Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozam- bique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) share this globally important river basin. Credible scientific infor- mation provided in the Zambezi Atlas will inform the insti- tutional and legislative processes that will shape develop- ments in the Zambezi River basin over the next decade. The publication of the Atlas has renewed interest in ba- sin management issues among the eight riparian coun- tries. After the launch in Angola, several governments expressed interest in the follow-up of the findings of the atlas. GRID-Arendal also worked with the Zambia Environ- mental Management Agency to produce the Zambia Atlas of our Changing Environment. The Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZAMCOM) and other institutions have expressed great satisfaction with the Zambezi Atlas publication. And interest to use the at- las methodology and visualization has been received from potential partners such as Germany’s Gesellschaft für In- ternationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KwF), which have activities in the Kavango- Zambezi trans-frontier conservation area. This interest in- dicates that the atlas work has a major potential to create real impact on the ground as demonstrated previously with the Uganda Atlas of Our Changing Environment 4 that generated immediate actions and policy decisions (ref. the final biennium report for 2010-11).

An Eastern-European example of transboundary water cooperation is the Lake Drukšiai/Drisviaty Basin Man-

4. http://www.grida.no/publications/the-uganda-atlas/

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