The Extended Bureau of the UNECE Committee on Environmental Policy met on 16 and 17 March 2010 to further prepare the Seventh Ministerial Conference “Environment for Europe”.
The “Environment for Europe” process and its Ministerial Conferences provide a high-level platform for stakeholders to discuss, decide and join efforts in addressing environmental priorities across the 56 countries of the UNECE region.
The Extended Bureau agreed that the next Ministerial Conference will take place in Astana (Kazakhstan) from 21 to 23 September 2011. The Conference will focus on two main themes: Sustainable management of water and water-related ecosystems; and Greening the economy: mainstreaming the environment into economic development. A draft agenda for the Conference will be prepared for consideration and approval by the Committee at its seventeenth session in November 2010.
The results of the Extended Bureau’s discussion will also feed into the first meeting of the UNECE Steering Group on Environmental Assessments (Geneva, 25–26 March 2010) that will work on preparing Europe’s Environment Assessment of Assessments for the Ministerial Conference.
In addition, the Extended Bureau concluded the peer review of Georgia’s second Environmental Performance Review (EPR) by adopting the EPR recommendations. Finally, the Extended Bureau approved the Guidelines for Developing National Strategies to Use Air Quality Monitoring as an Environmental Policy Tool for the countries of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia and of South-Eastern Europe and called upon those countries to implement these Guidelines.
More information and meeting documents are available at: http://www.unece.org/env/cep/ExtBureau16-17Mar2010.html
Ref: ECE/ENV/10/P09