HELCOM commemorates the anniversary of the 1992 Helsinki Convention

Helsinki, 17 January (HELCOM Information Service) – The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, more usually known as HELCOM, today marks the eighth anniversary of the entry into force of the 1992 Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area.

“As we mark the eighth anniversary of the Helsinki Convention's entry into force, we can say with a great sense of achievement that the governing body of the Convention - HELCOM - has become a mature environmental policy-maker in the Baltic Sea area and one of the most experienced regional international organizations, offering innovative, forward-looking, comprehensive and realistic approaches, with the focus on identifying problems and developing appropriate actions to solve them,” said Anne Christine Brusendorff, HELCOM’s Executive Secretary.

This 1992 Convention is an update of the original Helsinki Convention, signed by the Baltic Sea coastal countries in 1974. It was renewed in light of the political changes in the region, and developments in international environmental and maritime law in the beginning of the 1990s. The new Convention is also the first international agreement ever to take into account all aspects of marine environment protection. It aims to prevent pollution from ships, land-based sources, pollution resulting from the exploitation of the seabed and its soil. The Convention covers not only the Baltic Sea, but also the surrounding drainage area within the coastal countries, which compromises more than 1.7 million sq km.

The governing body of the Convention - HELCOM works as an intergovernmental organization of nine Baltic Sea coastal countries and the European Community to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea from all sources of pollution and to ensure safety of navigation in the region. The main tasks of HELCOM are to provide timely information about environmental trends and the state of the fragile marine ecosystem and develop common objectives and actions, which the governments of the Baltic Sea States must implement through their national environmental programmes and legislation. HELCOM has been working to improve the Baltic marine environment, largely through some 200 HELCOM Recommendations.

During the past years, HELCOM has achieved a significant reduction of pollution loads to the Baltic Sea. These efforts have led to noticeable improvements, enabling people to bathe on beaches that were once polluted, and helping wildlife populations to recover. But there is still a lot to be done, as many of the environmental problems are proving difficult to solve.

In order to ensure that all possible steps are taken to improve the state of the marine environment, in 2007 HELCOM adopted a strategic Baltic Sea Action Plan to drastically reduce pollution to the sea and restore its good ecological status by 2021. The cross-sectoral Baltic Sea Action Plan, which HELCOM has been drafting since 2005, is designed to solve all major environmental problems affecting the sea. It will be a crucial stepping stone for wider and more efficient actions to combat the continued deterioration of the marine environment resulting from human activities. The overarching plan identifies the specific actions needed to achieve agreed targets within a given timeframe for the main environmental priorities, which are: 1) combating eutrophication, caused by excessive nutrient of nitrogen and phosphorous which mainly originate from inadequately treated sewage and agricultural run-off; 2) curbing inputs of hazardous substances; 3) ensuring maritime safety and response capacity to accidents at sea; and 4) halting habitat destruction and the ongoing decline in biodiversity.

The HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan is the first attempt by a regional marine protection convention to implement the ecosystem approach defined by the 1992 Rio Declaration and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It will lead to profound, innovative changes in the ways the coastal countries manage the environment in the Baltic Sea region. The innovative approach is that the plan is based on a clear set of ‘ecological objectives’ defined to reflect a jointly agreed vision of ‘a healthy marine environment, with diverse biological components functioning in balance, resulting in a good ecological status and supporting a wide range of sustainable human activities’.

One of the major highlights of the new plan is that it opens a new era in marine environment protection by including the concept of maximum allowable nutrient input. It also contains provisional country-wise annual nutrient input reduction targets for both nitrogen and phosphorus.

The HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan has already been widely supported by politicians at various forums, and heralded as a pilot project for European seas in the context of the proposed EU Marine Strategy Directive. The European Commission has described HELCOM’s plan as a cornerstone for further action in the Baltic Sea region, emphasizing that the plan is instrumental to the successful implementation of the proposed EU Marine Strategy Directive in the region.

For more information, please contact:

Nikolay Vlasov

Information Secretary

HELCOM

Tel.: + 358 (0)207 412 635

Fax: +358 (0)207 412 639

E-mail: nikolay.vlasov@helcom.fi