The project “Inven­tory, assess­ment and reme­di­a­tion of anthro­pogenic sources of pol­lu­tion in the Lower Danube Region of Ukraine, Roma­nia” (MIS ETC 995) financed by the Joint Oper­a­tional Pro­gramme Romania-​Ukraine-​Republic of Moldova 2007 – 2013, will lay the basis for cross-​border coop­er­a­tion in the Lower Danube region for iden­ti­fy­ing the sig­nif­i­cant land-​based sources of pol­lu­tion, improved mon­i­tor­ing of them, shar­ing infor­ma­tion about them, and devel­op­ing a strat­egy for reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing their impacts. As the three coun­tries con­cerned share the Danube River as a sin­gle hydro­log­i­cal unit, pol­lu­tion in one part can quickly impact oth­ers, so it is in the inter­est of all part­ners to coop­er­ate closely in this project.

Dur­ing the course of the project num­ber of inves­ti­ga­tions involv­ing 3 coun­tries con­cern­ing the sources of soil and water pol­lu­tion (includ­ing haz­ardous waste stor­age sites) in the Lower Danube region will be con­ducted, a risk assess­ment of these sources, and a cross-​border strat­egy for deal­ing with poten­tial risks and emer­gen­cies from the pol­lu­tion sources will be identified.

The spe­cific project objec­tives are:

• To improve knowl­edge of the cur­rent state of chem­i­cal dumps and waste­water dis­charges in the Lower Danube region and estab­lish pri­or­i­ties on how to reduce or elim­i­nate them;
• To reduce pol­lu­tion of the Danube from waste­water dis­charges; and
• To increase pub­lic aware­ness about sources of soil and water pollution

The regional project is struc­tured within 4 components:

1. Inven­tory and assess­ment of sources of pol­lu­tion affect­ing land and waters
2. Waste­water treat­ment infrastructure
3. Long term mon­i­tor­ing and risk assess­ment of pol­lu­tion sources
4. Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Ser­vice on Pol­lu­tion Sources

The GEF/​UNEP Enabling Activ­ity Devel­op­ment of Mina­mata Ini­tial Assess­ment in Moldova, sup­ported by the United Nations Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme, aims at prepar­ing the ground to rat­ify the Mina­mata Con­ven­tion on Mer­cury in Moldova and to build­ing national capac­ity to meet report­ing and other oblig­a­tions under the Convention.

Our coun­try is one of 92 states to join the Mina­mata Con­ven­tion on Mer­cury which is a global treaty to pro­tect human health and the envi­ron­ment from the adverse effects of mer­cury. The Con­ven­tion will sup­port the coun­tries’ efforts in strength­en­ing mea­sures against mer­cury at national, regional and global level in order to reduce its adverse impacts on human health and envi­ron­ment. The Mina­mata Con­ven­tion pro­vides for con­trols of mer­cury releases into the atmos­phere across a range of indus­tries, such as coal power plants, incin­er­a­tion and cement pro­duc­tion. It has also agreed on a range of mercury-​containing prod­ucts whose pro­duc­tion, import and export will be banned by 2020.

The Repub­lic of Moldova signed the Mina­mata Con­ven­tion on Mer­cury on 10 Octo­ber 2013.

GEF/​UNEP project Enabling Activ­ity Devel­op­ment of Mina­mata Ini­tial Assess­ment in Moldova will be imple­mented by the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment through the Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion Office, in coop­er­a­tion with other rel­e­vant min­istries, and the expected out­comes will con­tribute to rein­force­ment of the insti­tu­tional capac­i­ties in this sector.

The goal of the MIA devel­op­ment is to pro­tect human health and the envi­ron­ment from the risks posed by the unsound use, man­age­ment and release of mercury.

The devel­op­ment of the MIA has five components:

• Com­po­nent 1: Deter­mi­na­tion of Coor­di­na­tion Mech­a­nism and orga­ni­za­tion of process;
• Com­po­nent 2: Assess­ment of the national infra­struc­ture and capac­ity for the man­age­ment and mon­i­tor­ing of mer­cury, includ­ing national legislation;
• Com­po­nent 3: Devel­op­ment of a mer­cury inven­tory using the UNEP mer­cury toolkit;
• Com­po­nent 4: Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of chal­lenges, needs and oppor­tu­ni­ties to imple­ment the Mina­mata Con­ven­tion on Mercury;
• Com­po­nent 5: Prepa­ra­tion, val­i­da­tion of National MIA report and imple­men­ta­tion of aware­ness rais­ing activ­i­ties and dis­sem­i­na­tion of results.

The CO-​WANDA project aims at pro­vid­ing inte­grated solu­tions to the real­i­ties of the Danube region by tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the cul­tural, social, eco­nomic and geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures of all the ripar­ian coun­tries rep­re­sented within the con­sor­tium. The goal is to achieve a jointly agreed transna­tional ship waste man­age­ment sys­tem that answers the needs of each coun­try in par­tic­u­lar, while pro­mot­ing a green trans­port mode that shall play a key role in the eco­nomic devel­op­ment of the region.

Based on their areas of exper­tise and inter­ests, the project part­ners from 9 coun­tries (EU and Non-​EU coun­tries) have joined their efforts in an attempt to clar­ify the fol­low­ing aspects regard­ing the nav­i­ga­tion on the Danube:

1. Find solu­tions to improve the ship waste man­age­ment sys­tem on this inter­na­tional waterway;
2. Try out dif­fer­ent ship waste col­lec­tion alter­na­tives under the form of pilot actions and use the data thus gath­ered to iden­tify the pros and cons of each of the tests, as well as the per­fect mix of tech­ni­cal solu­tions to be adopted by each coun­try on its respec­tive sec­tor; and last but not least
3. Cre­ate the basis for an inter­na­tional Danube ship waste con­ven­tion to be applied on the Danube.

In line with the frame­work CO-​WANDA project goals, EPPO´s project aims for estab­lish­ing a sus­tain­able, envi­ron­men­tally sound and transna­tion­ally coor­di­nated approach in ship waste man­age­ment along the Danube by increas­ing the rel­e­vance of the poli­cies for­mu­lated in the Repub­lic of Moldova to tackle these issues and cre­ates the basis for prepa­ra­tion and fol­low up rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Danube ship waste man­age­ment treaty. The CO-​WANDA –EPPO project is sup­ported by the Euro­pean Union, through the SEE Transna­tional Coop­er­a­tion Pro­gramme, Addi­tional ENPI Call for part­ners from Moldova.

The expected results of EPPO´s activ­i­ties are:

i) An improved plat­form for dia­logue at SEE level regard­ing the sig­na­tory of the CO-​WANDA Con­ven­tion by for­mu­la­tion of the nec­es­sary pol­icy doc­u­ments and inten­sive con­sult­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of the Repub­lic of Moldova;

ii) Strength­en­ing the national pol­icy frame­work related to ship waste man­age­ment in the Repub­lic of Moldova;

iii) An increased capac­ity within the coun­try at both national and regional lev­els, to imple­ment mod­ern waste man­age­ment sys­tems, includ­ing ship waste in Moldova, thereby facil­i­tat­ing a reduc­tion in poten­tial harm­ful envi­ron­men­tal and health impacts which cur­rently pre­vails through­out the country.

Appli­cant: Slo­vak Envi­ron­men­tal agency

Part­ner: Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment of the Repub­lic of Moldova

Donor: Slo­vak Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Cooperation

Dura­tion: Sep­tem­ber 2013– August 2014

The appro­pri­ate man­age­ment of WEEE is essen­tial and impor­tant for econ­omy, envi­ron­ment, sus­tain­able resource man­age­ment and human health. At EU level the spe­cial Direc­tives have been intro­duced to pro­vide spe­cific mea­sure on WEEE man­age­ment with the aim to pre­vent, reuse, recy­cle and other forms of recov­ery of such waste as to reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impacts from these at EU scale. EEE pro­duc­ers are respon­si­ble for pay­ing for the waste man­age­ment sys­tem under the principle

The project over­all goal con­sists of analy­sis of cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in WEEE man­age­ment in Moldova and pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal and exper­tize sup­port on draft­ing of sec­ondary leg­is­la­tion for estab­lish­ing an inte­grated sys­tem for WEEE man­age­ment, ini­ti­a­tion of the pro­ce­dure for devel­op­ment of the soft­ware for the EEE producer’s registration.

The project presents the con­tin­u­a­tion of the activ­i­ties launched in 2011 with the sup­port of Slo­vak Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion on devel­op­ment of envi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion in Moldova and its har­mon­i­sa­tion with legal reg­u­la­tion of the Euro­pean Union. At the same time, the project will con­tribute to the improve­ment of expert capac­i­ties and aware­ness rais­ing of state admin­is­tra­tion and gen­eral pub­lic on envi­ron­men­tally sound han­dling of waste elec­tri­cal and elec­tronic equip­ment (WEEE).

The tar­get group of the project is state admin­is­tra­tion, pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion and other rel­e­vant sub­jects either from non-​governmental organ­i­sa­tions or pri­vate sector.

Expected out­puts of the project:

- Draft Gov­ern­men­tal Deci­sion on WEEE regulation

- Tech­ni­cal con­cept on soft­ware for the EEE Register

- The pool of trained staff of MoE

- Final project report