Memorandum of cooperation between EEA and Ramsar
Released on 2006-04-04On February 27th the EEA and Ramsar Secretariat signed a Memorandum of cooperation.
The key point of this Memorandum is to "develop a collaborative programme for sustainable wetland and water resource conservation and management by increasing current consultation and cooperation". It encompasses enhancement of communication within each other's party strategy and particularly joint activities in the framework of the operational objectives of the strategic plan of the Convention Secretariat.
The immediate implications of this MoC are: - the EEA will encourage its member and collaborating countries to deliver Ramsar site boundaries to the secretariat. The EEA will also support the secretariat by providing the Reportnet infrastructure for the data collection. Ramsar Secretariat will make available the latest quality checked data sets from the Ramsar Sites Information Services to EEA with permission to use them for analyses and publish the results with due reference to the Ramsar Convention. The European Topic Centre on Biodiversity has already piloted use of information on Ramsar sites with its partner Wetlands International, the data manager of the Ramsar Sites Information Services.
The full text of this MoC is available on-line at http://www.ramsar.org/moc/key_eec_moc_2006.htm. EEA National Focal Points will receive a copy of the data request sent to the Ramsar network.
