Picture: Katja Lovén (left), Resident Twinning Adviser in Baku, together with her assistants Rahila Karimova and Gunel Soltanova.
Air pollution is a major health risk around the world. The World Health Organisation estimates that costs linked to premature deaths due to air pollution amount to 7% of the GDP of Azerbaijan. According to the European Environmental Agency, it caused over 400.000 premature deaths across the continent in 2016, the year this project started.
This Twinning project was led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute and supported by experts from meteorological and environmental institutions in Latvia, Austria, and Finland. It assisted the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan in modernising air quality monitoring and management systems in line with EU best practice.
During the two and a half years of the project:
- The institutional framework was upgraded. Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources revised and streamlined internal roles and responsibilities in environmental data collection, and increased data collection, processing, analysis, reporting and communication capacities.
- Technical systems in environmental monitoring were developed. An old air quality monitoring station was replaced by a modern, online air quality monitoring station.
- Recommendations for future development were also provided to secure sustainability of the project results and the further development of the air quality and environmental monitoring in Azerbaijan.
Project title: Upgrading the National Environmental Monitoring System (NEMS) of Azerbaijan on the base of EU best practices
Project ID: AZ 15 ENP ENV 43, 2016-2019