The project builds upon a series of GEF IW projects for the Black Sea that together represent one of the most extensive and consistent interventions in the GEF IW portfolio.

Initial GEF efforts on Black Sea ecosystem protection date from 1993. The BSEP ‘label’ served an important function of making the various interventions coherent and comprehensible to the public and to the governments. It is also attracted donor interest to the increasingly popular cause of ‘Saving the Black Sea ’, to which the BSEP label became closely associated. Under BSEP a series of background studies have been completed, and a Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis was finalised in June 1996. On the basis of this comprehensive report senior government officials negotiated the Black Sea Strategic Action Plan (BS-SAP) , signed on 31 st of October 1996, during the Ministerial Conference in Istanbul .

In the period 1997-1999, National Strategic Action Plans were developed and implemented with the help of funding from the regional GEF intervention. GEF-PDF-B support also enabled completion of reviews of the current legal, policy and institutional provisions for limiting nutrient discharges to the aquatic environment at the national level in the year 2000. This latest effort, commencing in 2002, is linked under the Danube / Black Sea Strategic Partnership, together with the Danube Regional Project (UNDP), and the Black Sea Nutrient Reduction Facility (World Bank). The Strategic Partnership is a US$ 97 million support framework, providing investments and capacity building to the 17 riparian countries of the Danube / Black Sea basin, to improve water quality and reduce nutrient loading.

The project was split into two implementation phases - Phase I (Apr 2002 - Oct 2004) and Phase II (Nov 2004 - Oct 2007), based on a reconsideration of the relative priorities of achieving certain targets and evaluation of the need for earlier delivery of certain project outputs which will be essential inputs for the implementation of other activities envisaged for the 5 years integrated project.

The BSERP was launched as a two phase, US$10 million 5-year effort, with UN Operations Services (UNOPS) acting as managing agent on behalf of UNDP. The project includes an implementation unit (PIU) in Istanbul Turkey , housed together with the Permanent Secretariat to the International Commission of the Black Sea (BSC).

The project supports the Black Sea regional aspects of the Black Sea Partnership for Nutrient Control and it assists and strengthens the role of the Black Sea Commission (of the Bucharest Convention for the Protection of the Black Sea against Pollution).