The closing meeting of the "Turkey Marine Environment Strategy Development Project", which started on June 29, 2018 with the protocol signed between the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, General Directorate of Environmental Management and TÜBİTAK MAM Environment and Cleaner Production Institute, was held online on November 26, 2021.
Participants from the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, TÜBİTAK MAM Environment and Cleaner Production Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and other relevant Ministries, Coast Guard Command, Department of Navigation, Hydrography and Oceanography and universities.
The project aims to develop a "Strategy and Action Plan for the Protection of Turkey's Marine Environment" in order to ensure ecosystem-based management of marine and coastal waters in line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals, European Union (EU) requirements and Regional Marine Conventions in line with the principles of ecosystem-based approach.
The project area covers all Turkish seas including the Black Sea, Marmara Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Aegean Sea. The main objective of the WFD Project is to establish the necessary technical/administrative/institutional/legal infrastructure for the implementation of the WFD in Turkey. The scope of the WFD Project, which aims to produce practical outputs for the sustainable management of the marine areas of our country, includes all 11 descriptors defined in the WFD, which constitute the general conceptual framework of the project.
As a result of the creation of both technical and legal, administrative and institutional outputs, an important step has been taken towards the implementation of the WFD in our country and thus the sustainable management of our marine areas. Within the scope of the project, the targets, measures and indicators required to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) for all our seas were determined and an updated short, medium and long term "Measures Program" was prepared. A cost-benefit analysis has been carried out for the new measures proposed in this program and while conducting this analysis, it has been investigated to what extent the proposed program and existing measures contribute to achieving environmental objectives. On the other hand, the measures included in the Program of Measures were prioritized on the basis of sectors.
Stakeholder engagement processes were also effectively utilized in the project activities. Among the activities planned within the scope of the project; many workshops were held in which working groups consisting of academicians, representatives of public institutions, local administrations and non-governmental organizations actively participated. For example; "Good Environmental Status (GES) and Monitoring Program Workshops", "Precautions Program Workshop", "Turkish Seas and Pilot Region Socio-economic Analysis Workshops", "Legal Workshops" organized in two phases.
The project has 2 important outputs in this context;
- "National Marine Environment Protection Strategy Document and Action Plan"
- "State of the Marine Environment Reports", which are prepared separately for each of our seas, based on the past five years of work on the management of the marine environment, in accordance with the formats determined by the EU and Regional Conventions on the Marine Environment.
