Norwegian Minister of the Environment Helen Bjornoy presented a plan on the use of marine resources in the Norwegian sector of the sea.
Russian Deputy Natural Resources Minister Valentin Stepankov said his ministry was prepared to draw up a similar plan to be included in the 1991 bilateral intergovernmental agreement on environmental protection.
Stepankov said the document should outline measures to safeguard the biological resources of the Barents Sea, prevent radioactive pollution and foster information exchange.
Stepankov informed the Norwegian delegates about the mechanisms for handling marine biology in Russia. He said the Federal Service for the Oversight of Natural Resources annually reviewed the catching norms for various bio-resources in the sea.
"The ministry is ready to convey the opinion of the Norwegian side about the fishing quotas established by the Russian Natural Resources Ministry to [Russian] experts," he said.
Bjornoy said the Russian quotas were correct.
The meeting also highlighted the environmental aspect of Russia's program to explore its continental shelf, which covers 6.2 million sq km. According to oil and gas experts, 4 million sq km could be developed. The Natural Resources Ministry has drafted a plan to study and develop the shelf until 2020, including in the Barents Sea, the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.
Stepankov said the ministry's program included a complex environmental protection system. He suggested that the Norwegian side study the main provisions of the document at the next session of the Russian-Norwegian environmental commission, tentatively scheduled for October 2006.
Environmental concerns acquired particular significance after a spate of incidents involving Russian trawlers that occurred in the Barents Sea toward the end of last year. Two vessels, the Kapitan Gorbachev and the Dmitry Pokramovich, were detained by the Norwegian Coast Guard on October 24, 2005 and released four days after posting bail. The Norwegian authorities had detained the trawlers near Medvezhy Island in the Barents Sea after the boats entered a 12-mile exclusion zone without permission.
The Norwegian authorities accused the ships' crews of unauthorized fish reloading in Norway's territorial waters.
These arrests came in the wake of a more serious drama in the middle of October, when the Norwegian authorities pursued another trawler, the Elektron, for five days across the Barents Sea. The captain had been accused of violating fishing regulations and holding two Norwegian border guards on board the trawler until it reached Russian territorial waters.
