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Ukraine Finland Environmental Monitoring (UFEM)

  • Duration: 2024 - 2028
  • Status: Ongoing

The project aims at improving the environmental information production capacities of Ukraine’s environment and water administration and in the long-term the overall environmental monitoring. The improved information production capacities will also give rise to detecting and assessing war damages on natural resources and the environment, namely on surface waters and terrestrial biodiversity, and to the EU membership application process within the acquis chapters on environment.

Project management
Tea Törnroos (Syke)
Project team
Jouni Lehtoranta (Result Area 1 lead), Peter Kullberg (Result Areas 2 and 3 lead) and experts from International Expert Services, Marine and Freshwater Solutions, Nature Solutions, Quality of Information, Research Infrastructure
Financiers
Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Partners
Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine; State Water Resources Agency of Ukraine
Subject area
International, Water, Nature, Environmental information

Objectives

The “Support to Ukraine in the assessment of environmental damages and development of water quality and terrestrial biodiversity monitoring” project will improve the reliability and availability of environmental information as well as the capacity of Ukraine’s authorities to utilize novel technologies and approaches. This will enhance Ukraine’s overall ability to monitor environment and assess and quantify war related damages. The project will also enhance the authorities' capacities to mitigate damages and to apply more informed, fact-based decision-making and management options to manage Ukraine’s post-war restoration efforts. 

Project implementation

Project implementation will focus on following result areas:

  1. More reliable surface water quality data in compliance with EU requirements available for environmental management, protection, and remediation. 
  2. Improved capacity to collect and deliver reliable biodiversity monitoring data, especially for meeting the reporting requirements under the EU Habitats and Birds Directives. 
  3. Remote sensing introduced and initiated as a supporting tool for terrestrial biodiversity monitoring and surface water quality monitoring.

The improved capacity to monitor and assess surface water quality and terrestrial biodiversity will give rise to long-term improvement and modernization of Ukraine’s environmental monitoring and its alignment with the EU’s accession requirements. The goals of the project are in line with the requirements of EU’s water and nature conservation legislation to support Ukraine’s efforts to gain EU membership by building capacities needed to fulfill requirements of the membership negotiations. The project will improve the quality of monitoring data by processing formats that comply with EU guidelines (e.g., operating in the WISE system) and prepare implementation of EU directives.