The Black Sea SIERRA consortium assembles 7 organizations from 3 EU countries (RO, BG and IT) and from 2 non – EU countries (UA and TR) consisting of 1 R&D institute (COO - RO), 3 academies (RO, BG, UA) and 3 universities (TR, IT, RO) demonstrating a high-level expertise and providing the required infrastructure to support the project objectives implementation. The consortium is built on a strong and well-established network of partners, its composition reflects a concrete sense of complementarity and it provides an evidence of operational maturity and effectiveness and a well thought distribution of capacity and duties to assure the best outcomes and best practices are accomplished.

The Black Sea SIERRA project will prepare and adapt decision-makers' response capacity to current/emerging marine pollution, by coordinated cross-border response to armed conflict contamination. The consortium, by Black Sea (RO, BG, UA, TR) and Mediterranean experience (IT), lists two priorities:

• Identifying specific types of marine pollution, including war related contaminants, on an area of cca. 90,000 km2 along the Black Sea shoreline (territorial, international waters), tributary rivers, and lagoons; Quantifying added marine pollution from armed conflicts, by detecting new contaminants and by hotspot diachronic and synchronic assays of undisturbed core sediments (thru project risk maps); Detection/assay of novel hazardous substances: war-generated/emerging contaminants, microplastics, pesticides, to assess the impact/threats on key marine biodiversity; A map of underwater noise pollution will assess its impact on biodiversity (dolphins);

• The research in demand grants premises to the management plan and training curricula and outputs on armed conflict contribution to marine pollution; Providing a handbook on marine pollution assessment methodology and sources, including armed conflicts in the Black Sea region; Development of remedial measures to be implemented by competent authorities; Conducting training workshops and meetings with decisional stakeholders and policymakers to increase response capacity, and to optimize cooperation of Black Sea participant countries.