BONN Agreement – More Than 50 Years of Spill Response Cooperation

Abstract

In 2019, the BONN Agreement celebrated 50 years of continuous cooperation in dealing with marine pollution in Europe. This makes the Bonn Agreement the oldest regional agreement in the world established by governments for jointly dealing with and responding to pollution incidents. The first “Agreement for Cooperation in Dealing with Pollution of the North Sea by Oil” was signed in 1969 by the eight states bordering the North Sea: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This was shortly after the oil tanker “Torrey Canyon” broke up off Cornwall in 1967 spilling 117 000 tonnes of oil in the first major pollution disaster affecting Western Europe. In 1983 the agreement was expanded to include “other harmful substances” as well as oil and the European Union became a Contracting Party. In 1989 the agreement was amended to include aerial surveillance. In 2010, Ireland was included and in 2019, at the 50'th anniversary, a new enlargement of the geographical scope was approved by including the Bay of Biscay through Spain's accession and a new task related to the monitoring of air pollution from ships was incorporated. The area of the Bonn Agreement now covers the Greater North Sea and its approaches, comprising most of the heavy density traffic area and oil fields in Western Europe. During these 50 years, the cooperation has resulted in a number of achievements on different topics. Some of these are: - aerial surveillance and detection of marine pollution,- harmonized pollution reporting format,- common quantification of oil spills through the Bonn Agreement Oil Appearance Code,- systems for reimbursement of costs when rendering assistance as the Bonn Agreement provides for mutual assistance between Contracting Parties,- joint exercises,- information sharing on experiences and on research & development findings,- Bonn Agreement region-wide risk assessment through the BE-AWARE project. In October 2019, the agreement's 50th anniversary was celebrated and a ministerial meeting was held. This paper will give an overview of the history, the achievements and the future for the Bonn Agreement.