Protecting the Black Sea

A nearly enclosed sea cannot be looked after by any one of its shores. Whatever runs off the land, whatever is dumped at sea and whatever spills from a damaged ship is shared, sooner or later, by every coast around the basin. The countries of the Black Sea answered that problem with a treaty, the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution, usually called the Bucharest Convention. Its history, as set out in the Black Sea Commission's account of the framework, runs from 1992 to the present day.

A convention signed in 1992

The Convention was signed in Bucharest in April 1992 and ratified by all six legislative assemblies of the Black Sea countries by the beginning of 1994. The treaty itself set a lower bar for entry into force: at least four signatories had to ratify before it could take effect.

The Convention serves as the basic framework agreement, with the detailed commitments set out in protocols attached to it. That arrangement left room for the treaty to grow, and two further protocols were added in later years.

Five protocols

Three protocols came with the Convention and entered into force alongside it. They covered the control of land-based sources of pollution, the dumping of waste, and joint action in the case of accidents such as oil spills. Between them they addressed the three most familiar ways a sea is harmed: slowly from the land, deliberately at sea, and suddenly through accident.

Two more followed. The Black Sea Biodiversity and Landscape Conservation Protocol was signed in Sofia on 14 June 2002 and entered into force on 20 June 2011. A fifth, the Protocol on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Black Sea from Land-Based Sources and Activities, was signed on 17 April 2009 and entered into force on the same day in June 2011. The second of these returned to the question of pollution from the land, which the original protocols had already identified as a central concern.

The Commission in Istanbul

A treaty needs an institution to carry it forward. The Convention's provisions are supported by the Commission on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution, known as the Black Sea Commission or the Istanbul Commission, and by its Permanent Secretariat in Istanbul, Türkiye. The Commission continues to meet: its 46th Regular meeting was held on 28 October 2025, when it adopted its budget.

Strategic Action Plans of 1996 and 2009

Alongside the legal texts sit two plans of action. The Strategic Action Plan for the Rehabilitation and Protection of the Black Sea was signed in Istanbul on 30–31 October 1996. Its successor, the Strategic Action Plan for the Environmental Protection and Rehabilitation of the Black Sea, was adopted at a ministerial meeting in Sofia on 17 April 2009, the same day the fifth protocol was signed. Where the protocols set out obligations, the plans set out the work of restoring the sea's health.

International Black Sea Day

The sea also has a day of its own. International Black Sea Day falls on 31 October, and the Commission's records describe celebrations held in Şile, Istanbul, on that date in 2018, organised jointly by the Commission and Türkiye's environment ministry. Such occasions are a reminder that protecting a shared sea depends on public attention as well as on treaties.

What it meant for port cities

For the port cities around the basin, the treaty framework described the setting in which their own concerns sat. Sewage, waste, harbour traffic and the risk of a spill are, in the first instance, problems that cities live with directly, and a city on one shore had good reason to care how its neighbours across the water dealt with them. The Convention gave those shared concerns a regional legal form, while the practical, day-to-day exchange of experience between municipalities remained the work of city networks. The page on cooperation among Black Sea cities looks at that municipal side of the story.