Context, scope and methodology
a new agreement, and dialogue with Belarus towards Partnership Priorities, have already been initiated (European Commission, 2020b). Launched in 2009, the EaP is a strategic and ambitious partnership based on common values and rules, mutual interests and commitments, as well as shared ownership and responsibility. It aims to strengthen and deepen the political and economic relations between the EU, its Member States and the partner countries, and supports reform processes in partner countries. The EU Water Framework Directive (EU WFD) has provided an important benchmark for the reform of water policies in the EaP countries. The main aim of the EU water policy is to ensure that a sufficient quantity of good-quality water is available for both people's needs and the environment (EEA, 2018). The EU WFD set environmental objectives for protecting and sustainably managing water resources (Directive 2000/60/EC) via the implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM). It is suggested that the same principles are pertinent to those international river basins extending beyond the boundary of the EU. The EU WFD recommends producing a single RBMP for international river basin districts with neighbouring countries.
regional work plans for various environmental thematic areas (EEA, 2020). With such technical and financial support from the EU, the EaP countries — among others — implement activities to strengthen the principles of the SEIS in the area of water and water resources management. Taking into account the three main pillars of the SEIS, i.e. content, cooperation and infrastructure, the EEA and the EaP countries tailored the national and regional work plan so as to support SEIS implementation in the thematic area of water (Figure 1.1). EEA activities implemented with the EaP countries covered the following domains of SEIS pillars.
Content • Harmonisation of the national water data with Water Information System for Europe (WISE) • Water accounts for developing the relational water database • Indicator development line with the EEA indicator method and template for regional comparability. Infrastructure
WISE has been developed as a partnership between the European Commission (Directorate-General for Environment, Joint Research Centre and Eurostat) and the EEA. The EEA hosts the water data centre and thematic WISE webpages. WISE collects, shares and disseminates data and information on water resources and water resources management, including data reported by the EU Member States under the reporting cycle of the EU WFD RBMP (2). WISE has also been used by the Eionet member countries (3) for reporting and sharing water data under the State of the Environment data flows.
1.1
Scope of the report
In 2016, the EU initiated a project on the implementation of Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) principles and practices in the European neighbourhood regions. The four-year project, implemented by the EEA, aimed to transfer the knowledge and experiences from the EU and Eionet to the EaP countries, whereby the EEA and the EaP countries jointly developed national and
• Information systems as pilot activity in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to strengthen implementation of the SEIS principles. This report primarily aims to present regional information and assessment from the aggregated results of water indicators to support existing or potential regional cooperation with regionally harmonised data, information and assessment. Furthermore, the report briefly touches on the gap in regional data on water resources and the need for further work to improve knowledge‑based environmental policy and the sustainable management of water resources. The scope and content of this report have been confined by the selected UNECE water indicators (UNECE, 2007a) which have been agreed with the EaP countries. The selection of indicators has been mainly driven by data availability across all countries and common issues at the regional level, such as RWR, water pollution, water scarcity and resource efficiency (Table 1.1).
(2) https://water.europa.eu/freshwater (3) The European Environment Information and Observation Network (Eionet) is a partnership network of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and its 38 member and cooperating countries: https://www.eionet.europa.eu/
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Water availability, surface water quality and water use in the Eastern Partnership countries
