2016-09-20
The National Contingency Plan
Firstly, it was established the National Contingency Plan (NCP) and the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), together with the Brazilian Navy and Brazil's National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), was assigned to deal with oil spills in waters closest to our shores. With all that responsibility the Institute soon sought consistent information about “what” and “how” to do it. This is where the UE-Brazil Sector Dialogues Support Project came in. In 2014, during the 7th Call, IBAMA submitted a proposal for action to especially acquire knowledge on standards and legislation for the Contingency Plans of European Countries and response to environmental emergencies at sea, including requirements of the ports concerning the handling of oil and other hazardous products. The Project has funded missions of Brazilian teams to Portugal and Finland, research works on the part of European and Brazilian experts, in addition to events in Brazil that brought Europeans to exchange ideas with Brazilian technicians.
The flow of ideas, suggestions and discussions was so rich that resulted in one more proposal for action, presented to the Sector Dialogues in the 8th Call for proposals. The goal there was to learn about the practical methods to be used to combat possible spills. The recruitment of new experts and new missions to Europe had a very solid result.
In Brazil the agencies that make up the National Contingency Plan would only hear about accidents involving oil if the company would warn them, “the polluter must warn IBAMA about the incident”, as said by Fernanda Cunha Pirillo Inojosa, General Coordinator of Environmental Emergencies, IBAMA. In Europe, that control is made by the European Space Agency (ESA), through a Satellite called Sentinel, which, among other things, is used to seek suspected oil stains, turning Europe into an active monitor of incidents. That is the model that Brazil intends to achieve.
In one of the missions of Ibama’s technical project for ESA, a cooperation agreement was signed by and between the two institutes. Now Sentinel is directed to Brazil to cover the Basins of Campos, Santos and Espírito Santo, plus the pre-salt polygon. That is, at the moment, with the European satellite images, the Brazilian dynamics to identify and take action against this kind of pollution is faster. Sentinel identifies a suspected oil stain, sends it to IBAMA which generates a map and returns it to the European agency. This return helps calibrate satellite models.
This cooperation is still in the process of formalization by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), so that the images can be sent in real time to Brazil via an INPE’s antenna. ESA has interest in a point in South America for reception of the images from Sentinel.
Having completed the activities promoted through the Sector Dialogues Project, the exchanges go on between Brazil and Europe. This time the Brazilian Government will present a solution to the European agency. IBAMA is developing SISNOLEO, a system to automatically identify oil stains captured by Sentinel (the idea is that the identification will become automatic). It is a new step of a cooperation that started back in 2014, with a small action within the Project, that not only brought solid and important results, as it continues to strengthen the Brazil-EU cooperation on an efficient movement towards clean waters. This is a great example of how the Project contributes to find solutions to the major global challenges in unity and cooperation between these two important parties.
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