UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub is implementing EU funded project: “European Union for Improving Environmental Monitoring in the Black Sea (EU4EMBLAS). The overall objective of the project is to help improve protection of the Black Sea environment. This objective will be pursued through further technical assistance focused on establishing modern systems and facilities for environmental monitoring (in Georgia and Ukraine), capacity building, assessment of environmental status in line with EU MSFD/WFD and public awareness raising on the Black Sea environmental issues. 

One of the key EU4EMBLAS project results is aimed to equip relevant national institutions with facilities and suitable analytical equipment to be able to perform analysis of environmental marine monitoring samples to obtain data that are required for environmental and ecological status assessment of the Black Sea harmonised with the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and Water Framework Directive (WFD) requirements, considering the Black Sea Specific Contaminants (BSSCs).

In order to achieve this aim, necessary analytical and sampling equipment needs to be provided to the relevant institutions, which are currently able to perform only basic analyses, which are not sufficient to respond to the requirements for environmental and ecological status assessment. 

Two institutions were identified and agreed (by the project stakeholders and the Project Board) in Georgia and Ukraine as recipient organizations of technical support provided by the project in form of laboratory and sampling equipment:

• Georgia: National Environmental Agency of Georgia (Tbilisi) and its Fisheries and Black Sea Monitoring Centre (Batumi);

• Ukraine: Ukrainian Scientific Centre of Ecology of the Sea – UkrSCES (Odesa). 

The proposed analytical and sampling equipment for Ukraine is focused on:

i) strengthening the position of UkrSCES in the field of analytical chemistry by purchasing GC and LC-MS/MS instrumentation that represent the basic level in the determination of organic pollutants in the environmental matrices. GC-MS/MS instrument is equipped with Multi Purpose Sampler comprising all possible options for water analyses such as (i) injection of liquid extracts, (ii) headspace determination of VOCs, (iii) thermal extraction – desorption for microplastics, and (iv) SBSE extraction for GC amenable compounds. There is also new method for SPE extraction of water samples using automated SPE extractor. 

ii) improving the technical possibilities of sampling both water as well as sediment samples from the Research Vessel Borys Alexandrov, currently operated by UkrSCES.  

The proposed analytical and sampling equipment of Georgia is focused on: 

i) determination of microplastics in water samples, as well as analysis of WFD and MSFD (BSSCs) chemical parameters (including VOCs and target analyses); 

ii) analysis of biota samples.