The IAEA, or the International Atomic Energy Agency, is widely known as the world's "Atoms for Peace and Development" organization within the United Nations family. Set up in 1957 as the world's centre for cooperation in the nuclear field, the IAEA works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies. The IAEA offers challenging assignments in a stimulating multicultural workplace. It has around 2,500 staff members from over 100 countries with expertise in a variety of scientific, technical, managerial and professional disciplines. Most staff members work at the Agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
IAEA work on coastal and marine
- Sustained pollution can damage coastal and marine ecosystems and jeopardise the livelihood of entire communities. By applying cutting-edge nuclear and isotopic techniques, the IAEA helps Member States accurately monitor pollution, minimise the impact of incidents and mitigate their effect on local populations. To assist Member States in addressing coastal and marine pollution, the IAEA has developed a number of science-based tools and techniques that help decision-makers protect the marine environment.
- Through its environment laboratories, the IAEA plays a key role in research and training on how to monitor hazardous contaminants and biotoxins in seafood, through for example the use of the radio-ligand receptor binding assay, an analytic procedure used to detect toxins during harmful algal blooms.
- The IAEA’s Radiometrics Laboratory uses for example lead-210 and caesium-137 based geochronologies to reconstruct a record of environmental changes recorded in sediment and coral cores. This approach helps evaluate contamination accumulation rates in coastal and marine ecosystems.
- The IAEA Ocean Acidification-International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC) promotes international collaboration on ocean acidification. The OA-ICC organizes training courses in Member States and provides access to data and resources to advance ocean acidification research. The Centre promotes the development of data portals, standardized methodology and best practices. The OA-ICC works to raise awareness of the issue among various stakeholders and inform about the role that nuclear and isotopic techniques can play in assessing its impacts. To achieve these objectives, the OA-ICC works with many international partners and supports global and regional ocean acidification networks.
Regional Seas and IAEA
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plays an important role as an observer to a number of Regional Seas programmes. In addition,
- Since 1974, IAEA EL has collaborated with UNEP Regional Seas to strengthen Member States capacity to analyse contaminants in Regional marine pollution monitoring programmes
- IEAE has signed practical arrangements with the OSPAR Commission on sharing data on concentrations of radioactive substances in the OSPAR Maritime Area.
- The Marine Environment Laboratory (IAEA/MEL) cooperates with MAP in assisting Member States to understand, monitor and protect the marine environment and coordinates technical aspects of international ocean protection, training and assistance programmes, as well as technical supervision of the National Monitoring Programmes’ data-quality assurance of chemical analyses through inter-training, inter-calibration, scientific visits, and purchase of instruments and quality control.
- IAEA partnership with the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment, the IAEA’s Monaco-based Environment Laboratories analysed oyster and marine sediment samples from the Persian Gulf to determine levels of radionuclides, trace elements, organic contaminants and biotoxins related to harmful algal blooms.
- SPREP has signed a practical arrangement with IAEA for cooperation on Ocean Acidification, Climate Change, Coastal Pollution and Improvement of Analytical Quality
- Other Regional seas Conventions which have established close working relations and collaboration with IAEA include the Black Sea Commission, Cartagena Convention, and Helsinki Convention.
Please visit their website: https://www.iaea.org/
