ABSTRACT
The UN/ECE has been developing a strategy for monitoring transboundary river systems over a number of years, with a focus on river basins in Eastern Europe. The EU, through its Tacis Programme, agreed to fund a project termed the "Joint River Management Programme" (JRMP) whose aim was to test the application of the UN/ ECE Guidelines on transboundary monitoring in the basins of the Kura, Pripyat, Seversky Donets and Tobol rivers, involving work in seven countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU). JRMP experience has provided an insight into the practical problems of monitoring water quality and exchanging information between FSU countries and the challenges that will have to be faced in order to comply with the requirements of the Helsinki Convention. JRMP's draft River Basin Management Plan (for the Pripyat) was the first prepared in the FSU according to the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) guidelines. Whilst capabilities of the monitoring organisations in FSU countries are slowly being re-built following the sharp decline of the 1990s transition, their budgets still have very low priority, and equipment levels are far from satisfactory. JRMP has helped its partner organisations with equipment, training and institutional development, but we see a parallel need to promote "partnering" between monitoring organisations to provide opportunities to technicians from the FSU to work alongside counterparts within more developed monitoring organisations as well as with their FSU transboundary counterparts.
