Open Skies Treaty states discuss usage of unarmed observation flights for environmental purposes

VIENNA, 15 October 2004 - Experts from 31 states party to the Open Skies Treaty today discussed the possible use of the Treaty's tools for ecological purposes, such as cases of floods, tornadoes, air and soil pollution as well as urbanisation.

Some 80 participants, also including representatives of countries who are not parties to the Treaty, focused on aerial surveillance activities and the need to use them in the environmental field.

Participants in the two-day Seminar on the Environmental and Ecological Use of the Open Skies Regime compared different ways of environmental surveillance, especially between the ones made via satellite and Open Skies aircraft.

Military experts and scientists agreed that the Open Skies aircraft can be used for cross-border environmental emergencies and disasters, and the verification of international environmental conventions.

Among the cases presented where the Open Skies assets were successfully used in disaster situations were:

- the Oder River flood in 1997, when a German Open Skies aircraft took images of the full river area from the river Neisse to the Baltic Sea within a 10-day period and shared them with the affected countries, i.e. Poland and the Czech Republic.

- the scheduled trial observation flight conducted in 2000 by Germany and the U.S. with a U.S. Open Skies aircraft to asses the forest areas damaged by Hurricane Lothar, which caused severe destruction in France and Germany.

- the use of Spanish Open Skies aircraft to detect the oil track after the tanker Prestige sank 130 miles off Spain's north-west coast on 20 November 2002 and spilled almost 20 million gallons of heavy fuel oil.

The meeting was held under the Polish Chairmanship of the Open Skies Consultative Commission.

Background: The origins of the idea of Open Skies date back to the early years of the arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. In 1955, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower suggested to the Soviet Union the use of aerial photography as a means to create mutual transparency of the weapons arsenals on both sides to deter and lift suspicions of surprise attacks. The bilateral proposal was turned down by the latter, but the idea was re-introduced in 1989. NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization member states started discussing the issue in 1990 and the Open Skies Treaty was signed on 24 March 1992 by 26 states.

During the trial implementation phase between 1992 and the Treaty's entry into force in 1 January 2002, almost 400 bilateral and multilateral test flights were performed. More than 150 unarmed observation flights between the states parties were conducted since the latter date. Each of the 55 OSCE participating States can apply to accede to the Treaty. Currently 31 of them are party to it.