Armenia’s Unfinished Environmental Agenda Ahead of COP17

Listen to the AI generated audio article.

In October, Armenia will be hosting one of the world’s biggest international gatherings on biodiversity, bringing governments and environmental experts to Yerevan for the UN’s 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP17.

The conference will put Armenia’s own environmental record in the spotlight. The country has signed or joined most major international environmental agreements, but some important commitments remain unfinished, including frameworks covering transboundary water management, safe water and sanitation, pollution monitoring, industrial emissions and environmental transparency.

That gap matters because international agreements can create rules for sharing water across borders, require governments to set measurable targets, make pollution data public and establish mechanisms for monitoring and accountability.

Armenia’s recent accession to the Nagoya Protocol shows that progress is possible when there is political will. But other commitments have remained pending for years, in some cases decades. As Armenia prepares to welcome the world’s biodiversity community, we need to ask what these agreements could actually change for the country, and why so many remain unfinished.

This article looks at several of Armenia’s unfulfilled environmental commitments, and what joining or implementing them could mean for transboundary water management and access to safe water and sanitation to pollution monitoring, industrial emissions and environmental transparency. 

The UN Water Convention

One of the most significant environmental conventions Armenia has yet to join is the UNECE Water Convention, formally known as the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.

The Convention provides a framework for countries sharing water rivers and water resources to cooperate on their management, including through information exchange, joint monitoring, pollution prevention and the development of transboundary agreements. UNECE has encouraged Armenia to accede to the convention.

For Armenia, the issue is imperative. Its rivers cross into neighboring countries or form international borders, while climate change and growing water scarcity are putting additional pressure on water resources. Yet Armenia is not part of the main regional framework for managing these shared waters. Of its four neighbors, only Azerbaijan is a party to the Water Convention. 

Armenia already cooperates with UNECE on transboundary water issues despite not being a Party to the Convention. In December 2025, Armenia and Georgia signed an agreement on transboundary water monitoring in the Khrami-Debed basin with UNECE support. The cooperation followed several years of work and included joint monitoring and assessment of the basin’s water resources. 

The challenges are more complicated with Armenia’s other neighbors. Armenia and Turkey share the Araks River, and Turkey is developing major water infrastructure upstream that could affect the amount and seasonal flow of water reaching Armenia. Despite the absence of diplomatic relations between Yerevan and Ankara, the two countries have established a Commission on the Joint Use of the Waters of the Akhuryan and Araks Rivers. It remains to be seen how the commission’s work will proceed, however, as a number of agreements reached between Armenia and Turkey since 2022 have stalled.

The situation is more complicated with Azerbaijan. The two countries share several river basins, but there is currently no official bilateral cooperation on their transboundary water management. Armenian officials have stated that issues concerning the use of transboundary waters can be discussed with Azerbaijan after the completion of the border delimitation and demarcation process, which has made little progress since May 2024.

What would joining the Convention give Armenia?

For Armenia, the main benefit of accession would be access to an established international framework to address transboundary water issues. The Convention provides rules and mechanisms for cooperation between countries sharing rivers and water basins and can support the negotiation of agreements, joint monitoring and information exchange.

This could be particularly important for Armenia because some of its most complicated water-related issues involve countries with which cooperation is currently limited. Accession would not resolve these issues by itself or force neighboring states to reach agreements, but it would give Armenia an additional international framework through which such cooperation could be pursued.

The fact that Azerbaijan is already a Party is relevant. Accession would place Armenia and Azerbaijan within the same international framework for transboundary water management, potentially providing an additional platform for addressing shared water issues as relations between the two countries evolve.

Armenia could also benefit from UNECE’s technical expertise and support in areas such as monitoring, water management and the negotiation of transboundary agreements. The Armenia-Georgia experience in the Khrami-Debed basin demonstrates that this support can already produce practical results.

Accession could also help facilitate international financing for water management and transboundary cooperation. At the domestic level, implementing the Convention’s standards could strengthen Armenia’s systems for monitoring water resources, controlling pollution, managing wastewater and adapting to climate-related pressures.

For Armenia, therefore, joining the Water Convention would be more than another environmental treaty commitment. It would provide an additional tool for managing a growing strategic challenge: protecting the country’s water resources in a region where rivers cross borders, climate change is altering water availability and relations with some neighboring states remain unsettled. 

Protocol on Water and Health

Another important instrument that Armenia has yet to ratify is the Protocol on Water and Health under the UNECE Water Convention.

This protocol is a legally binding UNECE-WHO/Europe instrument aimed at protecting human health through sustainable water management and the prevention and control of water-related diseases. It requires Parties to set targets on areas including drinking water, sanitation, water quality, disease prevention and equitable access, and to monitor and report on progress.

Armenia signed the Protocol in 1999 but has never ratified it. UNECE-supported work has subsequently helped develop national water and health targets, but these targets do not constitute legally binding obligations under the Protocol because Armenia has not become a Party to it. Armenia can nevertheless benefit from UNECE’s technical support and expertise as a signatory, while avoiding the full substantive obligations that come with ratification.

This is significant given that Armenia continues to face challenges with access to safe water and sanitation, especially in rural communities.

More than half of Armenia’s rural settlements lack centralized water supply and sanitation services. Access also varies significantly between urban and rural areas, with a much larger share of rural residents relying on unimproved sanitation facilities.

Wastewater management presents an even broader challenge. Armenia generates hundreds of millions of cubic meters of wastewater every year, but only a small proportion receives adequate treatment. Much of the country’s wastewater infrastructure is outdated, while untreated or inadequately treated wastewater continues to enter the environment.

This has consequences beyond sanitation. Poor wastewater management contributes to pollution of Armenia’s rivers and water bodies, including Lake Sevan, creating environmental, public health and economic risks. Aging infrastructure, limited treatment capacity and fragmented institutional responsibilities have made improvements difficult to implement.

The problem is therefore not simply a lack of infrastructure, but also one of governance, monitoring, and enforcement. Armenia has adopted strategies and legislation aimed at improving water management, but implementation has been hindered by limited technical capacity, unclear institutional responsibilities and insufficient resources.

What would joining the Protocol give Armenia?

Joining the Protocol would give Armenia a legally binding framework for turning commitments on drinking water, sanitation and water-related health into measurable national targets, deadlines and monitoring mechanisms. It would also bring Armenia into a UNECE-WHO framework for technical assistance, data collection, public participation, and cooperation on water-related health risks.

For Armenia, this could provide a mechanism for addressing some of the country’s most persistent water-management problems, particularly unequal access to safe water and sanitation, inadequate wastewater treatment and the monitoring of water-related health risks.

Pollution, Industrial Emissions and Transparency

Armenia also lags behind in ratifying a number of international protocols addressing pollution, industrial emissions and environmental transparency. Three are particularly relevant: the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR), the Gothenburg Protocol and the Protocol on Heavy Metals.

The PRTR Protocol, adopted under the Aarhus Convention, is primarily about transparency. Armenia signed it in Kyiv in 2003 but has never ratified it. The Protocol requires Parties to establish publicly accessible national registers containing information on pollutants released by industrial facilities and other sources into air, water, and land, as well as pollutants transferred off-site for treatment or disposal.

Armenia does not currently have a nationwide PRTR system meeting these requirements. UNECE’s 2024 Environmental Performance Review recommended that Armenia encourage the establishment of a national pollutant release and transfer register, noting that Armenia lacks a unified environmental information system and that existing databases are not interconnected.

For Armenia, ratification would therefore mean establishing a practical mechanism through which the public could see what pollutants specific facilities are releasing, where, and in what quantities. The Protocol does not itself impose emission limits; rather, it requires systematic reporting and makes the information publicly available. This can strengthen accountability by allowing authorities, communities, journalists and researchers to identify major sources of pollution and track changes over time.

Armenia’s mining sector illustrates the stakes: industrial activity has contributed to contamination of soil and water with heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, copper and molybdenum, as well as air-quality concerns associated with open-pit mining and quarrying.

The other two protocols address the reduction of specific forms of air pollution.

Armenia has not ratified the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone, under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution. The Protocol establishes emission-reduction commitments for pollutants including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and ammonia, and was later amended to include particulate matter. UNECE has developed a specific action plan to support Armenia’s ratification.

Armenia’s air-quality problems also underscore the potential value of the Protocol. Yerevan, where a substantial share of the country’s population is concentrated, has faced persistent air-pollution concerns, while industrial centers such as Vanadzor, Gyumri, and Ararat also face emissions from industrial and other sources.

Armenia has also not ratified the 1998 Protocol on Heavy Metals, another instrument under the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution. It establishes controls on emissions of lead, cadmium, and mercury, making it relevant to countries with significant mining and industrial activity. UNECE has specifically recommended that Armenia pursue ratification.

Taken together, the three instruments address different parts of the same problem. The PRTR Protocol is primarily about transparency—making pollution visible. The Gothenburg and Heavy Metals protocols are about reducing particular categories of pollution. For Armenia, where industrial emissions, mining-related pollution, and urban air quality remain significant environmental concerns, the gaps are therefore not simply about treaty membership but about the mechanisms for measuring, controlling, and publicly accounting for pollution.

The Nagoya Protocol 

Unlike the protocols discussed earlier, Armenia acceded to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization this summer, just months before hosting COP17. 

Although Armenia is not considered a megadiverse country, its biodiversity is significant for its size. Its varied climate and geography support a high level of plant diversity and make the country an important source of wild relatives of crops such as wheat, barley, and fruit species. he Protocol establishes rules for accessing these genetic resources and sharing the benefits arising from their use, including through scientific cooperation, data sharing, technology transfer, training and, where applicable, financial benefits.

Armenia’s accession shows that environmental commitments can move forward when there is sufficient political will and institutional momentum. It also highlights the question of why other commitments have remained pending for years, in some cases decades.

Environment