The Black Sea States’ activities in the field of environmental protection take place under the ‘umbrella’ of the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea against Pollution, adopted in 1992 at Bucharest (1992 Bucharest Convention), which together with the 1996 Black Sea Strategic Action Plan and additional protocols form the legal basis for regional cooperation.

The 1992 Bucharest Convention is a typical “framework” instrument modelled on similar regional seas agreements adopted in the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Although drafted and adopted approximately at the same time as some ‘second generation’ regional seas treaties, such as the 1992 Helsinki (Baltic Sea), the 1992 OSPAR (North Sea) and the 1995 Mediterranean conventions, the Black Sea framework in terms of its substance and conceptual approach is reminiscent of the much earlier ‘first generation’ regional seas regimes.

The 1993 Odessa Declaration was exactly the type of an action-orientated document which was necessary to supplement the general obligations of the ‘framework’ treaty and established specific and concrete targets and timetables for implementing the objectives of the 1992 Bucharest Convention. However, none of these targets appear to have been accomplished on time. In the same vein, the objectives of the Strategic Action Plan for the Black Sea (BS SAP) adopted in 1996 proved to be too ambitious and had to be amended in 2002. The 2002 Sofia Declaration is imprecise (as compared with the 1993 Odessa Declaration), since concrete objectives were not developed/included. However, it is still not entirely clear whether the new timeframes have been complied with, as no implementation and compliance review or control system exist at present.

The Black Sea Countries are also bound by international environmental agreements and conventions. A large number of conventions and agreements have signed and ratified by all six countries (Annex 13), providing a good basis for improvement of transboundary cooperation. International/transboundary cooperation is also supported through bi/tri-lateral agreements (Annex 14)

National strategies/policies/regulations do not specifically address the four priority Black Sea transboundary issues. These are not formally looked upon as priority areas and are handled within broader programme areas, such as:

• Habitat changes and alien species introduction within broader biodiversity programmes.
• Changes in commercial marine living resource within broader biodiversity programmes.
• nutrient over-enrichment/eutrophication among other elements of water management plans/strategies.

As a consequence, there are no dedicated budgetary allocations specifically for the Black Sea transboundary problems and no statistic is available for the total (public, private, domestic and foreign) capital investments channelled to address each of the problems.

Environmental policies in all six Black Sea Countries make use of the “polluters pays“ principle, based on laws, provisions, plans, procedures, standards to be met and prohibited activities. Also, enforcement powers are assigned to agencies, fines and other penalties are specified, and monitoring is promoted to ensure compliance.
Georgia, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, having once been part of the Soviet Union, have similar legislation. Similarities can be found in terms of environmental regulation which is organized as management of different natural resources such as land, water, forest, biotic and natural resources. Environmental protection has been treated as a separate issue. Since natural resources have not been privatized (initial steps have been made only for land privatization), the management structure has maintained its main features of the state owner control for the use of the resources. In the Russian Federation the particular problem that has occurred is that natural resources, differentiation of state property and nature management, environmental protection and environmental safety, etc are under the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the territorial subjects of the Russian Federation (art. 72 of the Constitution).
For Romania and Bulgaria the EU accession process represents the driving force for both adoption and implementation of environmental legislation ensuring more sustainable development. It can be stated that in terms of policy/legal status there is a need for improvement/harmonisation in four of the countries: Ukraine, Russian Federation, Georgia and Turkey. While in Turkey the Process of harmonization with EU policies is on-going and progress is evident under the EU accession process, in Ukraine and Georgia, even though the programmes have been approved and adopted, the socio–economic situation and political instability are slowing implementation down.

Despite the above comments on a lack of problem-specific legislation, an attempt has been made to divide existing national legislation into the four major transboundary problems (Annex 15), together with a table identifying key pieces of over-arching legislation. In addition, sectoral legislation relating to the following four sectoral categories is presented in the same Annex:

• Tourism
• Urban planning
• Agriculture
• Industry and transport

Since the legislation is not issue-specific, and the majority of the immediate and underlying causes of the four major transboundary problems are shared, inevitably many of the individual pieces of legislation overlap. In Annex 15, however, individual pieces of legislation have been assigned, where possible, to individual problems or sectors, to help identify where attention has been focused. Of course, a greater number of individual laws does not necessarily imply greater coverage or attention to a problem than a single, comprehensive piece of stand-alone legislation.

Nevertheless, it appears that reasonably robust legislation exists to cover the four major transboundary problems, albeit that standards/norms for industrial wastewater discharge to sewer require further clarification. The current lack of a basin-wide approach to pollution management in at least three of the countries [Georgia, Russia and Ukraine; Turkey’s EU accession talks should shift the emphasis in this country] seriously weakens the ability of regulators to consider the downstream effect on the Black Sea of direct wastewater discharges to rivers.