WATER AND INDUSTRIAL
ACCIDENTS
Major industrial accidents may cause far-reaching transboundary
effects and may lead to accidental water pollution.
Therefore, the Signatories to the Convention on the
Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents and
the Parties to the Convention on the protection and
Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International
lakes decided to cooperate on issues related to the
prevention of accidental pollution of transboundary
waters.
As a result of this cooperation, a workshop
on the prevention of chemical accidents and limitation
of their impact on transboundary waters was held
in Berlin (7-9 May 1998). Taking into account the
results of this workshop, the seventh meeting of the
Signatories to the Industrial Accidents Convention
(13-15 May 1998) proposed that a joint ad hoc expert
group on water and industrial accidents be established
under both Conventions. This proposal was endorsed
by the first meeting of the Working Group on Water
Management, established under the Water Convention,
in September 1998. In the following, two meetings
of the joint expert group were held, during which
the seminar on
the prevention of chemical accidents and limitation
of their impact on transboundary waters (Hamburg,
4-6 October 1999) was prepared. The conclusions
and recommendations of this seminar were then
adopted at the second Meeting of the Parties to the
Water Convention, held in The Hague (23-25 March 2000)
and endorsed by the first meeting of the Conference
of the Parties to the Industrial Accidents Convention,
held in Brussels (22-24 November 2000).
In 2000, the Parties to both Conventions extended the mandate
of the joint expert group to support and provide guidance
in the implementation of the above recommendations
and agreed on the groups future work plan as contained
in decision 2000/5
on the prevention of accidental water pollution taken
by the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties
to the Industrial Accidents Convention (ECE/CP.TEIA/2
Annex VI).
Joint expert group on water and industrial accidents
(joint expert group)
The joint expert group is co-chaired by Mr. Gerhard Winkelman-Oei (Germany) and Mr. Peter Kovacs (Hungary).
Since the extension of its mandate,
the joint expert group held eighth meetings:
-
First meeting in Berlin (Germany)
on 18-19 October 2001, see
report, for further
information on this meeting see
meeting
documentation;
-
Second meeting in Budapest
(Hungary) on 15-16 April 2002, see
report
-
Third (extended) meeting in
Geneva on 4 July 2002, see
report
-
Fourth meeting in Kaliningrad
(Russian Federation) on 30-31 October 2003, see
report
- Fifth meeting in Budapest (Hungary) on 26 October
2004,see report
- Sixth meeting in Geneva (Switzerland) on 16
December 2005,see report
- Seventh meeting in Geneva (Switzerland) on 10-11
April 2006, see report
- Eighth meeting in Yerevan (Armenia) on 15 November 2007 (see report). The meeting held back to back with the Workshop on the Safety of Tailing Management Facilities, organised on 12–14 November 2007.
Major areas falling under the responsibility of
the joint expert group
-
-
Assistance in adapting these guidelines
to the specific needs and circumstances in river
basins;
-
Drawing up safety guidelines and
best practices for tailing dams, pipelines, and
navigation of ships on rivers;
-
Alarm and notification systems;
-
-
Transboundary contingency planning;
and
-
Methodologies to identify hazardous
activities that handle smaller amounts of substances
than those specified in annex I to the Industrial
Accidents Convention.
The Joint expert group, on the request from the Intergovernmental
Working Group on Civil Liability, was involved in
drawing up two technical annexes to the Protocol
on Civil Liability and Compensation for Damage
Caused by Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents
on Transboundary Waters - for details see JEG4/28
May 2002 and JEG5/10
July 2002.
Following the second meeting of the
Conference of the Parties to the Industrial Accidents
Convention (see ECE/CP.TEIA/7,
paragraphs 40-41), the joint expert group received
the following additional requests to:
Reports
on implementation of the conclusions and recommendations
of the Hamburg seminar