The first pan-European conference of environmental ministers, held at Dobríš Castle, Czechoslovakia, in 1991, requested that a comprehensive state of the environment report be done for the whole of Europe. Prepared by the European Environment Agency Task Force in cooperation with Governments and intergovernmental bodies, the Dobríš Assessment was published in 1995 (EEA, 1995a). Without indicating priorities, the report identified the following as the 12 most significant environmental problems of concern to Europe:
• climate change,
• stratospheric ozone depletion,
• the loss of biodiversity,
• major accidents,
• acidification,
• tropospheric ozone and other photochemical oxidants,
• the management of fresh water,
• forest degradation,
• coastal zone threats and management,
• waste reduction and management,
• urban stress, and
• chemical risks.
The Dobríš Assessment has been an important source of information for this section. Additional documents that were of use related to specific sectoral issues and supplemented the information contained in the Dobríš report on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). It is noteworthy that the relatively prolific and detailed documentation available for much of the region contains frequent references to the inadequacy of existing data for reliable environmental monitoring and assessment.
The region is vast, covering more than a fifth of the earth s land area and extending further than 11,000 kilometres between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Russian Federation makes up more than 60 per cent of this total area. Some 15 per cent of the world s population live in Europe and the CIS countries.
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