Qatar- Marine environment reviewed

4/30/2016 9:52:57 PM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Doha: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment hosted a Meeting of the Steering Committee of the Marine Environmental High Risk Areas (MEHRAs) and Place of Refuge Project last week.

The meeting was attended by committee members who are the representatives of the Member States of the Regional Organisation for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) in addition to a number of International experts from the IMO as well as from Anatec Ltd.

The project aims at identifying and updating the high sensitive marine areas within the ROPME Sea Area. It also aims at establishing the Geographical Information System (GIS) which can be updated whenever some new information about the sensitive marine areas is available. It also identifies risks which are generated from ships so that precautionary actions would be taken to avoid marine catastrophes.

Captain Abdul Munem Al Janahi Director MEMAC said the agenda of the meeting includes important items such as the International Decision A 949 (23) which deals with “Place of Refuge Project”. The decision is of high importance for the protection of our coastal and marine sensitive areas not only for the benefit of our current generation but also for the benefit of the future generations in general he added saying that our Region faces tremendous challenges from navigation and marine traffic as the number of ships visiting our Region is rapidly increasing due to the process of development in different fields of life.

Last year the number of ships passing the Strait of Hormuz was 49830 while 10 years ago the number was 28500 ships.

By studying different surveillances it has been noticed that the number of oil tankers and tankers carrying chemicals has increased dramatically.

The Peninsula

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