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AJEPP-07

AJEPP-07 best environmental practices for military training areas

NATO commanders and military training area managers sustaining habitats, cultural sites, water, soil, fire and noise conditions on training ranges, and the range-support or environmental contractors working under them

AJEPP-7 is NATO's voluntary best-practices handbook for commanders and training-area land managers, covering habitats, cultural sites, water, soil, fire and noise on military training areas.

Edition
B
Published
2020-01

What it is

What AJEPP-07 governs

AJEPP-7 (our catalogue lists it as AJEPP-07; the document itself prints "AJEPP-7") is the Allied Joint Environmental Protection Publication that gives NATO commanders and military training area managers best practices for sustaining land, air and amphibious training areas. Its own scope statement is that it "covers military training areas that support training for land, air and amphibious operations," and it "does not apply to military training and activities at sea" - other NATO and national publications cover maritime pollution, radiation, and hazardous-material and waste management. Nations record their agreement to use it in STANAG 2594, which is its cover. The document is direct about its own status: "the best practices presented are intended to be applied voluntarily; this is not a legally binding document." One nation has gone further still and put that in writing: Greece's Army records AJEPP-7 as "a non-mandatory guideline to use depending on the specific operative situation." This is Edition B, Version 1, promulgated 7 January 2020, superseding Edition A, Version 2, which nations were told to destroy on receipt.

AJEPP-7 addresses commanders and training-area land managers directly, never a supplier or contractor: "this document has been developed as a best practices handbook for commanders and military training area managers." For an organisation supporting a training range under contract, AJEPP-7 reaches them only through what a customer's contract or a national environmental directive puts in front of them, never by the document existing on its own.

Managing the land: habitats, water, soil, fire and noise

The bulk of AJEPP-7 works through five natural-resource areas. On habitats, it asks land managers to avoid disturbing landscapes without reason, restrict access to protected biotopes, and "minimize or eliminate firing into bodies of water or wetlands, if practicable" because of the lead-contamination risk; bullet catchers and berms should be de-leaded regularly. Invasive species get the same order of priority everywhere: prevention first, then "early detection with rapid response." On water and wetlands, it calls for assessing hydrological change before construction, using bunds, sediment traps or oil-water separators to keep contaminated run-off out of watercourses, and running "targeted surface water and groundwater monitoring" at points positioned down-gradient of live-fire training and near drinking-water or fishery receptors. Soil guidance covers compaction (tyre choice, training timing, traffic concentration) and erosion control through terracing, drainage and gully-prevention. Where wildfire risk exists, or where prescribed burning is used, an installation should hold "an integrated wild land fire management plan" tied to both the resource-management plan and the fire and emergency services plan, and stop burning "if it becomes too dry or windy (winds over 25 km/hr)." Noise guidance is about timing and mapping: building noise control into planning from the start, mapping noise-sensitive areas, and scheduling artillery exercises around fauna breeding seasons.

An integrated management plan ties this together. It "may follow the EMS structure described in STANAG 2583 / AJEPP-3, defined using the Deming Circle of plan-do-check-act," though that is offered as an option, not a requirement. AJEPP-7 asks the plan to be "established, implemented, maintained and revised," and to cover things like a summary of known resources, conservation and mitigation strategies for threatened ones, "Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-phased (SMART) indicators" to track progress, and standard operating procedures for routine and contingency situations.

Cultural property and information tools

Cultural resources get their own annex, and the obligation is stated plainly: commanders and troop-contributing nations should ensure "that no harm is caused to cultural resources while training," suspend activity where property is at risk, and see that any damage "should be documented and reported." An inventory of cultural property, carrying geographic coordinates, should be prepared and verified. Before ground-disturbing training, a cultural-resources survey feeds a comprehensive environmental baseline study, scored on a four-level impact scale running from "no impact" up to a "potentially significant impact" that would disturb a known religious, traditional or cultural resource, or human remains.

For information tools, AJEPP-7 recommends a geographic information system for training-area boundaries, cultural sites, soils, hydrology, flora, fauna and off-limits areas, built to a consistent standard and mapped with STANAG 3833 symbology. Mobile apps and unmanned aerial systems are named as field data tools, with UAS use flagged for wildlife-law permitting and set-back distances from threatened species. Education and outreach round out the document: pre-exercise briefings, information boards, and NATO's own environmental protection courses, all aimed at making sure land users know what they are training among.

How you are evaluated

AJEPP-7 names no accredited body, certification scheme or notified body. It is a voluntary best-practices handbook, not a standard an organisation is assessed against, and no page here should be read as saying otherwise. The real legal exposure runs through national and international environmental law that binds independently of AJEPP-7 - conventions such as Ramsar, the World Heritage Convention and the 1954 Hague Convention, and, for NATO and Partner nations inside the EU, instruments such as the Habitats and Birds Directives - and it is civilian environmental authorities and national courts that assess compliance with those. Inside the military, the document expects "military site managers effectively work together with competent civilian environmental authorities in complying with national and supranational environmental legislative requirements," and damage or shortfalls "should be documented and reported" up the chain of command, not to an outside assessor.

What it does not cover

AJEPP-7 does not apply "to military training and activities at sea." It sets no numeric discharge limit, no acceptance test and no product specification of its own; the technical detail for camps, environmental management systems and camp environmental files lives in related STANAGs such as STANAG 2582 (AJEPP-2) and STANAG 2583 (AJEPP-3), not in AJEPP-7 itself. AJEPP-7 is published by NATO and listed free of charge in the NATO Standardization Document Database; NATO's documents are not sold by ComplyTrain and we host no copies of them.

How we help

AJEPP-7 addresses NATO commanders and training-area land managers directly, not a commercial supplier, so ComplyTrain's usual starting point, implementing a standard as a management system, does not apply here on its own. Where a contractor holds a range-management, environmental-services or training-support contract that names AJEPP-7's practices, the actual work happens on the ground: surveying habitats, de-leading berms, running an environmental baseline survey, briefing troops before an exercise. ComplyTrain's part is holding the paper trail that work produces, as controlled, version-tracked documentation: the integrated management plan itself, the natural and cultural resource inventories and their periodic updates, the training records for the briefings and courses the document describes, and the inspection, survey and damage reports a commander or environmental protection officer is expected to keep. None of this is certified - AJEPP-7 names no accredited body and calls itself a voluntary handbook - so what ComplyTrain evidences is that a customer's contractual requirement was met, not that a scheme was passed.

ComplyTrain does not survey a habitat, run an environmental baseline study, conduct a prescribed burn or de-lead a berm. That work happens in the field, with the land manager's own expertise, not in software.

Which of AJEPP-7's practices actually apply to a given training area, and what a specific contract requires of a support organisation, is set by the contract and the customer's environmental clause, not by this page. See the standards explorer for the STANAGs and Allied Publications that sit alongside AJEPP-7, and talk to us about the evidence trail behind it.

Standards it references

Questions

Is AJEPP-07 mandatory?

No. The document says its best practices "are intended to be applied voluntarily" and that "this is not a legally binding document." Nations separately record their agreement to use the publication in STANAG 2594, and at least one nation, Greece, has gone on record treating it as "a non-mandatory guideline to use depending on the specific operative situation." Whether a specific range's practices are contractually required comes down to the contract or a national authority, not AJEPP-07 itself.

What is the difference between AJEPP-07 and STANAG 2594?

STANAG 2594 is the agreement through which nations record their commitment to use AJEPP-07. AJEPP-07 is the Allied Publication that actually holds the best practices: habitat, water, soil, fire and noise management, cultural resources protection, and information tools.

Can ComplyTrain get us certified to AJEPP-07?

No such certification exists. AJEPP-07 names no accredited body, notified body or government-surveillance scheme, and it describes itself as voluntary guidance rather than a standard anyone is assessed against. Checking runs through the military chain of command and, for the underlying legal obligations, through national and international environmental law, not through external certification.

Does AJEPP-07 cover maritime training or hazardous-waste management?

No. AJEPP-07 states plainly that it "does not apply to military training and activities at sea," and points to other NATO and national publications for maritime pollution and for radiation, hazardous-material and waste management.

Where can I get a copy of AJEPP-07?

From the NATO Standardization Document Database, which lists it free of charge. NATO's documents are not sold by ComplyTrain and we do not host copies of them.