Our History

The idea of establishing a Regional Centre to respond to marine pollution in the Mediterranean Sea during the mid-70’s stemmed from various sources.  Certainly the Protocol on Co-operation in Combating Pollution of the Mediterranean Sea by Oil and other Harmful Substances in Cases of Emergency, adopted in 1976 was a determinant factor, as well as the acknowledgement of the lack of regional contingency plans for co-ordinated action to prevent, control and combat oil spills, especially in emergency cases.  There was undoubtedly a need to assist the development and strengthening of the Mediterranean coastal States and to facilitate cooperation among them to deal effectively with cases of massive pollution.

It would have been foolish to regard the Mediterranean Basin as free from pollution and oil spill-risks; the need to prepare for and respond to oil spills among the Mediterranean coastal States has always been of paramount necessity.  Consequentially, the said Regional Oil-Combating Centre for the Mediterranean was established through the adoption of Resolution 7 in order to assist the Contracting Parties on the abovementioned challenges.

At its inception, several actions were initiated by the Centre.  As a Director, I undertook several visits to the concerned authorities in charge of oil spill response, visiting all but one coastal State to introduce the ROCC. These visits and questionnaires were hugely valuable, enabling our Centre to establish a network through contact points and liaison means, collecting data on appropriate response equipment and products used for oil spill response.  Information was gathered on available experts in the Mediterranean basin from the Contracting Parties, and response equipment manufacturers were also contacted.  The Centre gathered credible technical knowledge and was quickly in a position to reply to technical questions issued by coastal States. Besides that, National Contingency Planning was one of the main focuses for the ROCC during its early years, and information was gathered and disseminated to the Contracting Parties.  This was followed up with training and seminars. This initiation phase enabled us to define official procedures and tools, such as the information systems.  The relevance of this work and the support of the ROCC became obvious to the Mediterranean region when the pollution event of the AMOCO CADIZ occurred in 1978, and served as a wake-up call on the importance of such a Centre.

The ROCC was first dependent on the coastal States’ will to co-operate, and on whether their trust would be imparted to the Centre. The Centre then faced technical and financial limitations during its first years. However, by the end of the 70s, the Centre had already provided scientific and technical information to Cyprus, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Tunisia, Yugoslavia etc… The Centre rapidly faced increasing demand for assistance from the Contracting Parties, and notably with regard to the development of National Contingency Plans.  The ROCC responded in the best way that it could, within the constraints of the human resources available at that time, as the importance of the need to prepare for and respond to oil spills among the Mediterranean coastal States was a recurring continual need made ever present to the Centre under my mandate.  Reflecting back upon the progress achieved, in 1976 there were only two countries with fully developed National Contingency Plans, and yet today this number has progressed to eighteen out of twenty-one, with ongoing developments for further progress in this field.

Additionally, activities involving several key players and stakeholders, like the identification of high risk areas, involved initiating immediate responses from scratch, together with projects’ consortia, United Nations institutions, as well as concerned regional institutions.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that in the then pre-internet era, communications means were more limited, and exercises under my mandate called for improved communications to ensure efficiency in case of emergency. During its first 3 years of existence, 10 spills were notified to the Centre, albeit some were only communicated to the Centre after considerable delays. 

Whilst rewarding, the initiation phase also had its challenges: the Centre was at the exploratory stage in terms of its objectives and functions for many years following inception.  However, in view of the Centre’s journey, which is still going strong four decades later, the Mediterranean region should be proud of such an initiative.

The late 90s marked a significant step forward, a kind of turnabout, with regards to REMPEC’s mandate and responsibilities.

In 1992, the Earth Summit - UN Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro - adopted the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development as well as the Agenda 21, which specifically urged the Countries to an effective enforcement of the principles of a Sustainable Development. In particular, Chapter 17, which was devoted to the protection of Oceans and Seas, including enclosed seas and coastal areas, stated that “The marine environment forms an integrated whole that is an essential component of the global life-support system and a positive asset that presents opportunities for sustainable development. International law, as reflected in the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, sets for rights and obligations of States and provides the international basis upon which to pursue the protection and sustainable development of the marine and coastal environment and its resources. This requires new approaches to marine and coastal area management and development, at the national, subregional, regional and global levels”.

In 1995, the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention, amended the  Convention adopted in 1976, renamed this the “Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and Coastal Region of the Mediterranean, and adopted the new Mediterranean Action Plan 1995-2005 (MAP Phase II) to replace the MAP 1975 –the first plan adopted as a Regional Seas Programme under UNEP’s umbrella. In both of these documents, the Mediterranean Countries took into account the provisions of the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21. In particular, the Contracting Parties agreed to prioritise a “prevention attitude” while promoting sustainable development in the Mediterranean region, with the aim to better protect the marine-coastal environment.

Because of these reasons, the Mediterranean Maritime Community and the Contracting Parties recognised that a regional legal instrument focusing only on preparing for and responding to accidental marine pollution (as the Emergency Protocol 1976) was neither appropriate nor adequate to face the new challenges and risks posed by the significant growth of maritime traffic in such a highly confined sea.  An area which was already receiving 30% of the maritime worldwide traffic and the 27% of oil, as the second most congested maritime area in the world, after Malacca and Singapore Straits.

In 1997 the Contracting Parties supported a Resolution on the Regional strategy on prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships, which opened the revision process of the Emergency Protocol 1976 and encouraged REMPEC to propose to its National Focal Points in 1998 an amended version of the Emergency Protocol, in order to update the legal instrument to include some prevention issues and provisions. It was a first attempt, but as a result the Countries then decided to go further with a whole revision of the Protocol, leading the way for the Mediterranean Region to create a totally new one.  This was later adopted by the Contracting Parties in 2002: becoming the “Prevention Emergency Protocol 2002”.

Those decisions proved to be a significant boost for the Regional System and for the Contracting Parties themselves and resulted in a terrific sequence of initiatives and activities carried out in the forthcoming years through close collaboration with the Countries, the MAP Coordinating Unit, IMO, the EU, Civil Society, Universities, Research Institutions, Oil and Chemical Mediterranean Industry, NGOs and Local Communities

When the Jieh incident broke out in July 2006 it presented several challenging particularities.  Firstly, it was not an at sea incident, but, on the contrary, the spill, composed of heavy fuel oil and debris, that was spreading from the shoreline, being taken forward by the coastal currents heading north towards the Syrian Arab Republic shoreline which, at some point, was also contaminated. The characteristic nature of the incident hampered the use of many response means:  specialized oil recovery vessels which had a too important draught.  Also, the characteristics of the oil and the spill location prohibited any use of dispersant products, and the skimmers were not all fit for heavy oil and certainly not for debris.

Secondly, it provoked such an international mobilization that multiple communication channels were activated simultaneously.  This created numerous redundancies, adding to the heavy workload the Lebanese authorities already had in dealing with the various aspects of this situation, as the oil spill was only a part of the general emergency.

Finally, until the cease fire of the 15 August, it was impossible to assess the exact extent of the damage and to design an appropriate response plan.

In this emergency situation, supported by the IMO, UNEP and UNEP/ OCHA and the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention, REMPEC was able to fulfil its mandate by advising the Lebanese authorities on site and remotely, mobilizing the Mediterranean Assistance Unit and activating the Regional Information System to circulate requests and offers of assistance. Addressing specifically the oil spill emergency, REMPEC kept all interested parties up to date of the on-going situation.  For a small organization such as REMPEC, this was only possible because of the temporary support received from Canada, the United Kingdom and EMSA on behalf of the European Community.

In the context of an international response to an emergency led by UNEP/OCHA, REMPEC, being the competent Regional Activity Centre of the Barcelona Convention, has demonstrated the added value of relying on the Regional Sea Programmes to assist their well-established network of Focal points and partners organizations. REMPEC doesn’t have the mandate or the means to intervene in the response operations.  It was set up as the emergency regional Focal Point and a technical adviser, able to relay and trigger regional and international assistance, in accordance with the scaling up principle of the Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response Convention. Lessons learnt from this incident were numerous, resulting in several technical guides and trainings.  It also prompted the development of a Mediterranean partnership to establish a 24/7 operational oceanographic forecasting service under the leadership of the Mediterranean Operational Oceanography Network.

This incident also accentuated the necessity for improved communications links with the various stakeholders involved , and, in particular, the need for a common communication tool in order to avoid parallel requests and the duplication of efforts.  So, it was welcome news when the European Commission proposed in 2014 to open to all Contracting Parties of the Barcelona Convention and the Secretariat of the Regional Agreements, the use of the Common Emergency Communication and Information System (CECIS), as the integration of this tool would definitely improve the response time and exchange of information.

But beyond the technicalities of dealing with an emergency, the main role of REMPEC remains to assist the Contracting Parties in strengthening their level of preparedness, which is the bottom line of an effective response.