HELCOM releases Annual Report on 2004 activities

Helsinki, 25 May (HELCOM) – The Helsinki Commission, the inter-governmental organisation for the protection of the Baltic Sea marine environment, released its Activities 2004 Overview report today.

The report summarises the activities of the Helsinki Commission related to the protection of the Baltic Sea marine environment over the period from March 2004 to March 2005 and reviews the activities and trends according to the main environmental issues.

“In 2004, HELCOM celebrated the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Convention by the Baltic Sea coastal countries,” HELCOM Executive Secretary Anne Christine Brusendorff writes in her foreword. “Our organisation has become a mature environmental policy-maker, offering forward-looking, comprehensive and realistic approaches, with the focus on identifying problems and developing appropriate actions to solve them“

The Executive Secretary underlined that after three decades of productive professional work, HELCOM is today one of the most experienced regional international organisations. “Over the years, we have built up an efficient and well-functioning framework for international co-operation that has greatly contributed to welcome improvements in many aspects of the environmental situation in the Baltic Sea,” she said.

Touching upon the organisations priorities, the Executive Secretary said that HELCOM today is shifting away from an earlier approach that focused on sectors and species, to an ecosystem approach through which specific Ecological Objectives are set out, including milestones and final compliance dates. The backbone of HELCOM’s work will continue to be its monitoring and assessment programmes, including assessments of the efficiency of protection measures, as well as the information compiled by HELCOM on ecosystems and habitats. She added that actions are still urgently needed to curb eutrophication, to prevent pollution involving hazardous substances, to halt habitat destruction and the decline of biodiversity, and to improve navigational safety and the regional accident response capacity. “To tackle these issues, an integrated management approach will be adopted to ensure that interrelated activities inland, in the coastal areas and at sea are all duly addressed,” the Executive Secretary said.

The report can be viewed on HELCOM web site at http://helcom.navigo.fi/stc/files/Publications/Proceedings/bsep102.pdf. To order your print copy, please call the HELCOM Secretariat: + 358 (0)9 6220 220 or send an e-mail to info@helcom.fi.

Contact

HELCOM Secretariat

Mr Nikolay Vlasov
Information Secretary
Tel: +358 9 6220 2235
Fax: +358 9 6220 2239