Tel Aviv [Israel], February 6 (ANI/TPS): Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure and its Seas and Lakes Research Institute published the 2022 Mediterranean National Monitoring Report.
The report emphasizes the continuation of what the ministries described as “worrisome” trends: warming, salinization, acidification and rising water levels, alongside waste and pollution in coastal streams that originate from human activity. The decrease in pollutant concentrations in the sea water and on the ground continues.
It is based on a multi-year monitoring of a variety of physical, chemical and biological data required to understand the “health state” of the sea. The monitoring findings indicate the nature of the impact of the actions at the local and global level and reveal unusual events and trends with a long-term impact that Israel is dealing with.
The reports present the monitoring findings based on measurements and samples collected during 2022. The findings were analyzed and compiled into reports in the first half of 2023 and reviewed by the expert advisory committee that met in July 2023 and then by the inter-ministerial steering committee that finally approved the reports in December 2023.
Israel’s expanded national monitoring program has been operating since 2019, jointly funded by the Marine Pollution Prevention Fund at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure. The implementation is entrusted to the Society for the Exploration of Seas and Lakes of Israel (Hayal), according to the State of Israel’s commitment to the Barcelona Convention. The program unites the monitoring program of the offshore waters of the Ministry of Environmental Protection since 1978 and the deep sea monitoring of the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure since 2012. (ANI/TPS)
