Multilateral Environmental Agreements

The Czech Republic is not only an active member of numerous international organisations with an environmental component (see International Organisations), but also a party to a number of important multilateral environmental agreements. The agreements, which are very often negotiated under international organisations, are concrete manifestations of countries’ responsibility for the state and development of the environment at the global, regional and sub-regional levels.

The Czech Republic is involved in multilateral environmental agreements in order to contribute to the resolution of current environmental issues of sustainable development in compliance with the Millennium Development Goals, the Implementation Plan of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the relevant EU and OECD papers.

This section of the website provides basic information on the multilateral environmental agreements to which the Czech Republic is a party and of which the Ministry of the Environment is in charge.

The Multilateral Environmental Agreements can be divided according to their focus. The Czech Republic is active in the MEAs with the focus on the following fields:

• climate change (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol)
• nature and landscape protection (European Landscape Protection Convention, Carpathian Convention, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Antarctic Treaty – Czech Antarctic Station, Convention on Biodiversity, UN Convention to Combat Desertification)
• species protection (AEWA - The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, Bern Convention, CITES – Convention On International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, EUROBATS - The Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats, Otis Tarda Memorandum, International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, Bonn Convention)
• air protection (Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution)
• ozone layer protection (Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol)
• water protection (Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes)
• chemical substances and environmental risks (Rotterdam Convention, Stockholm Convention, Convention on Mercury, Cartagena Protocol)
• waste management (Basel Convention)
• industrial accidents (Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents)
• horizontal issues – access of public to environmental information, environmental impact assessment (Aarhus Convention, PRTR Protocol, Espoo Convention, SEA Protocol)