The Baltic Sea Fund awards environmental efforts in Finland, Sweden and Åland

An active and versatile professor from Turku, Finland, with focus on co-operation, and a strongly convincing, experienced and enthusiastic researcher from Järna, Sweden, share the Baltic Sea Fund prize in 2006. The prize sum is €22,000. Also ecologic farming is awarded with a prize of €3,000.

This year’s prize-winners were announced today by Åland’s County Governor Peter Lindbäck in a press conference at Hotel Arkipelag in Mariehamn. The prize ceremony will take place on Saturday, 20 May, at Åland Parliament House in Mariehamn.

·        Professor emeritus Erkki Leppäkoski in Finland has during his long career implemented a versatile and influential work both in Finland and internationally in the entire Baltic Sea region, on environmental issues concerning the Baltic Sea. Above all, he has specialised on the Baltic Sea and archipelago issues that have been closely related to the impacts caused by human beings' mechanic interference on archipelagic environment, socioeconomic and ecologic impacts on aqua culture, oil spills etc., and his latest project being the significance of alien species for the marine environment. Professor Leppäkoski has had, and still has, an active and significant role in the Nordic and Nordic-Baltic co-operation on the Baltic Sea environmental problems, and he has successfully taken initiative for new forms of co-operation. Prize amount is €11,000.

·        Associate professor, Agr.Dr. Artur Granstedt from Järna, Sweden, has for more than twenty years worked with agricultural environmental issues as a specialist advisor, researcher and research leader in different universities and polytechnics. He has, on scientific level, documented, developed, and established organic farming and rotation based on ecological farming as a real alternative for traditional farming in the Nordic countries. Granstedt has shown that the above-mentioned methods in agriculture make it possible to minimize phosphor and nitrogen to the surrounding environment. As a co-ordinator for the EU-financed project Baltic Ecological Recycling Agriculture and Society (BERAS), it has been proved that rotation farming can remarkably reduce the nutrition leakage to the Baltic Sea. The prize sum is €11,000.

·        Co-operative Odlarringen on the Åland Islands is awarded a prize of €3,000 for the efforts in farming and marketing organically grown agricultural raw produce, mainly vegetables and root vegetables. The new prize will be an annual award for an Ålandic environmental project.

For further information, please contact:

Edgar Öhberg, director, Baltic Sea Fund, +358-18-15270, +358-457-3135894

e-mail: edgar.ohberg@ostersjofonden.org