Europe - UNEP

Diversion dam on the Douro River near Palencia, Spain. Photo credit: Roger Admiral.
stage, it highlights a further important role of joint
commissions.
4.3.3 Environmental Impact
Assessment
The mandates of a number of international
agreements relating to transboundary waters
throughout Europe to conduct environmental
impact assessments is closely linked to the duty to
notify countries of planned measures. For
example, Article 3(1) of the 1992 Helsinki
Convention provides that “to prevent, control and
reduce transboundary impact, the Parties shall
develop, adopt, implement and, as far as
possible, render compatible relevant legal,
administrative, economic, financial and technical
measures, in order to ensure, inter alia, that
environmental impact assessment and other
means of assessment are applied.” This
convention goes on to state that one of the tasks
of transboundary basin commissions is “to
participate in the implementation of
environmental impact assessments relating to
transboundary waters, in line with supranational
and international regulations or other procedures
for evaluation and assessment of environmental
effects.”
The most pertinent supranational and
international regulations within the European
context that relate to environmental impact
assessments are the 1991 UNECE Convention on
environmental impact assessment in the
transboundary context, and the amended 1985
EU directive on the effects of certain public and
private projects on the environment that has been
subsequently amended in 1997 and 2003. Most
UNECE member countries have signed the 1991
UNECE convention that requires them to
establish an environmental impact assessment
prior to a decision to authorise or undertake
certain activities that are likely to cause significant
adverse transboundary impacts. 2 While national
environmental impact assessment procedures
were in place for many UNECE countries prior to
the implementation of the convention, this
regional instrument has made significant progress
52 — Hydropolitical Vulnerability and Resilience along International Waters: Europe