Statement of the Green Party of Ukraine on the consequences of the storm in the Kerch Strait

12.11.2007 16:00

Statement

of the Green Party of Ukraine
on the consequences of the storm in the Kerch Strait

12.11.07

The Green Party of Ukraine expresses sincere sympathy to the families of the sailors lost after the storm in the Kerch Strait and underscores an urgent need to strengthen measures to ensure safety of navigation which should be taken by ship-owners and sea shipping authorities. Under the climate change conditions we should review security standards and consider the factor of inevitable increase of meteorological threats.

The scope of ecological consequences of the sea pollution with oil products and sulphur can’t be estimated in full at the moment, but there is no doubt that it produced the greatest environmental threat of last decades in the Kerch Strait region. Minimization of the consequences of the wreck will depend largely on coordinated and competent actions of Russian and Ukrainian rescue services.

It’s necessary to stress, that the storm would have led to much lesser ecological damage, if there hadn’t remained on the both shores of the Kerch Strait traditionally formal attitude towards environmental safety standards in the Black Sea region, which is fixed, in particular, with the series of multilateral international legal documents ratified by both Russia and Ukraine.

Chairman of the Green Party of Ukraine                                                      Serhiy Kurykin

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