Projects

The current assessment of the impact of development on the status of marine waters does not adequately take into account provisions of the ODMS and therefore assessment of impact on status of marine waters is not comprehensive. To ensure that produced assessments are that take account of the ODMS, the content of the guidelines needs to be updated accordingly.

To this end, two objectives have been formulated for this research project:

• to develop a methodology for assessing the impact of an intervention on status of marine waters, taking into account the 10 quality descriptors set out in Regulation implementing Decision (EU) on criteria and methodological standards for good environmental status of marine waters, and specifications and standardised procedures for monitoring, assessment and repealing Decision 2010/477/EU (Official Journal of the RS, No 156/22)
• based on methodology, we will develop guidance for preparation of assessment of impact of development on the status of marine waters, taking into account the provisions of the ODMS.

However, given the current state of knowledge of all links between pressures and impacts in marine ecosystem and the state of development of individual descriptors of environmental status, it is anticipated that developed methodology will require recourse to expert opinion at different stages and that the final decision on the impact assessment will remain with the assessor. The guidance developed can be included as an annex to General Guidelines for Water Management.

We will also take into account the content of current Marine Management Plan and expert basis for its preparation when preparing the expert opinions on impact of the project on marine waters. The methodology developed will also be trialled in a test case to ensure its effectiveness and applicability.

To achieve the above project objectives, following activities are foreseen:

• a detailed examination of existing national approach to assessing the impact of interventions on the status of surface waters and current treatment of marine waters in processes of assessing the impact of interventions on their status and gap analysis,
• a review of current legislative and policy documents relevant to the implementation of the ODMS and its requirements and objectives,
• a review of impact assessment approaches in scientific literature and possible existing practises in other EU countries,
• developing a proposal for methodology to assess the impact of an intervention on the status of marine waters, which will also incorporate requirements and provisions of the ODMS into the impact assessment processes of interventions,
• define the links between pressures and individual descriptors, taking into account the latest scientific and expert knowledge, and identify possible indirect links between quality descriptors and impact of the intervention on them,
• developing a range of potential mitigation measures according to the predicted most frequent impacts of interventions on descriptors,
• identify possible ways to monitor and control the most frequent potential impacts of intervention on status of each descriptor,
• validate the proposed methodology using a theoretical test case,
• development of an expert proposal for guidance documents based on the latest expert and scientific knowledge that can be used in the assessment of the impact of the intervention on the status of marine waters, taking into account the Regulation implementing Decision (EU) on criteria and methodological standards for good environmental status of marine waters, specifications and standardised methods for monitoring, assessment and repealing Decision 2010/477/EU (Official Journal of the EU, No 156/22).

The results of the project will be presented at expert and scientific meetings, as publications of expert/scientific papers and at a public presentation of results at the end of the project, to which all stakeholders for whom the project results are of key importance will be invited.