New era on horizon as HELCOM prepares to adopt an ambitious plan to restore the Baltic Sea

Helsinki, 25 October (HELCOM Information Service) - The Member States of HELCOM, an international organisation for the protection of the Baltic marine environment, are set to adopt an ambitious overarching action plan to put an end to further destruction of the Baltic Sea and restore it’s good ecological status by 2021. The plan is almost fully complete and with only minor changes expected in the final version will be adopted at the upcoming meeting of the ministers of the environment of the Baltic Sea coastal countries scheduled for 15 November in the Polish city of Krakow, Prof. Mieczyslaw Ostojski, HELCOM’s Chairman announced today following the two-day Meeting of the Heads of Delegation of the Member States in Helsinki.

“After a relatively short time frame for drafting the plan, the coastal countries have reached broad consensus on concrete and meaningful measures that are needed to drastically reduce pollution to the Baltic Sea and achieve our common goal to make the Baltic Sea a more environmentally sound and healthier place,” said Ostojski. “The adoption of the plan will herald a new era for marine environment protection, providing HELCOM with a vast array of tools to rescue the troubled Baltic Sea. Its environmental state is rapidly deteriorating and requires urgent and comprehensive actions in order to prevent an irreversible environmental catastrophe.” HELCOM’s Chairman emphasised that failure to react right now will undermine both the prospects for the future recovery of the sea, and a vital resource for the future economic prosperity of the whole region. “The cost of non-action will be tenfold higher than the cost of action,” said Ostojski. “Clearly realizing this, the Baltic Sea countries came together in a spirit of unprecedented co-operation to devise a recovery strategy that lists joint goals for Baltic’s future and sets forth a commitment to achieve these goals through specific actions that the coastal countries will jointly undertake.”

The holistic Baltic Sea Action Plan is designed to solve all major environmental problems affecting the Baltic Sea. Of the many environmental challenges, the most serious, and proving difficult to tackle with conventional approaches, is the continuing eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, caused by excessive nutrient pollution loads of nitrogen and phosphorus to the sea originating from agriculture and untreated sewage. This leads to problems like increased algae blooms, murky waters, oxygen depletion and lifeless sea bottoms. Compared to pristine conditions in the 19^th century, nitrogen input to the Baltic Sea has increased ninefold, resulting in extensive summer algal blooms, as can be seen almost everywhere in the main basin of the Baltic Sea.

“The results that we get from modeling are encouraging and show that it is really possible to restore the Baltic Sea and achieve good ecological status,” says Anne Christine Brusendorff, HELCOM’s Executive Secretary. “We will not perhaps reach the pristine conditions but quite a pleasant situation as a result of more effective treatment of municipal waste waters, use of phosphorous free detergents and best practices in agriculture. But we can also see that if we continue business as usual the future is not looking good for the Baltic Sea. The algae blooms will be twice as intensive as today.”

According to a HELCOM study, a total annual reduction of up to 135,000 tonnes of nitrogen and 15,000 tonnes of phosphorus will be needed to rescue the troubled sea. Most of the reductions are required in such sub-basins as the Baltic Proper, the Gulf of Finland, the Danish Straits, and the Kattegat.

The Baltic Sea Action Plan, which the HELCOM Member States decided to jointly draft in 2005, sets an ambitious target of achieving a good ecological status of the Baltic Sea - a sea with diverse biological components functioning in balance and supporting a wide range of sustainable human economic and social activities. It incorporates input of major stakeholders groups, and the findings of numerous project studies, workshops, and key regional environmental policies. This plan has already been widely heralded as a pilot project for the European seas under the EU Marine Strategy and a model to be followed by other regional marine conventions around Europe.

The plan’s four segments include measures to curb eutrophication caused by excessive nutrient loads entering the sea, prevent pollution involving hazardous substances, improve maritime safety and accident response capacity, and halt habitat destruction and the decline in biodiversity. The core policy of the plan is based on the application of the innovative ecosystem approach to environmental management. This is detailed by a set of strategic goals and ecological objectives defined by HELCOM for achieving a commonly acceptable good status of the marine environment, as well as a number of environmental indicators and target levels for each objective to measure progress towards achieving good ecological status of the sea.

Note to Editors: 

The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, more commonly as the Helsinki Commission or HELCOM, is an intergovernmental organisation of all the nine Baltic Sea countries and the European Community working to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea from all sources of pollution and to ensure safety of navigation. 

HELCOM is the governing body of the "Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area," also known as the Helsinki Convention.

For more information, please contact:

Mr. Nikolay Vlasov

Information Secretary

HELCOM

Tel: +358 (0)207 412 635

Fax: +358 (0)207 412 639

E-mail: nikolay.vlasov@helcom.fi