Helsinki, Finland

10 November 2008

Priorities of the Russian Chairmanship of HELCOM

Speech by Mr. Igor Maydanov, Chairman of HELCOM,

at the HELCOM Diplomatic Lunch,

10 November 2008,

Sipuli Restaurant, Helsinki

Your Excellencies, dear Colleagues,

Good afternoon. I would like to begin my speech by saying how immensely grateful I am to all of you for finding the time to join the annual HELCOM diplomatic lunch. This is the eighth year when the Ambassadors of all the HELCOM Member States, as well as the countries in the catchment area meet to talk about issues having effect on the international co-operation for the protection of the Baltic marine environment.

As you know, as of 1 July, Russia has assumed the two-year Chairmanship of the Helsinki Commission. This is actually the first time the Russian Federation is chairing this intergovernmental organisation of the nine Baltic coastal countries and the European Community. The Chairmanship comes at a very crucial and at the same time challenging period of time when we are launching the implementation phase of the ambitious HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan to drastically reduce pollution to the Baltic Sea and restore its good ecological status by 2021.   

Under the Russian HELCOM Chairmanship ensuring the successful implementation of the internationally agreed set of actions to re-create a healthy Baltic marine environment will be the topmost priority.

We fully support the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, which was adopted last year at the Ministerial Meeting in Krakow. It is an initiative of the highest political importance for the protection of the Baltic Sea. Russia will try to ensure wider participation of various stakeholders in the implementation of the action plan, as well as the realisation of all the necessary measures to ensure the sustainability of the recovery process of the Baltic marine ecosystem. 

You may know that the action plan focuses on the region’s most urgent environmental problems and, in many ways, is linked to the European and international programmes that regulate activities in the common European space. Therefore, one of our main tasks over the coming two years is to pro-actively get all interested stakeholders involved in dialogues at the regional and Pan-European levels to provide permanent political support for achieving the plan’s environmental goals and mobilising the necessary resources.

In practice, the timeframe for the implementation of the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan is rather limited. A suitable methodology for prioritising projects designed to meet the goals of the plan at both the national level and at the Baltic Sea region level should, therefore, be developed as soon as possible together with the approaches to mobilise and combine financial, human and other resources.

One of the topmost issues is the elaboration of a comprehensive list of municipal waste water treatment plants. This is considered as one of the priority projects for the successful implementation of the action plan. Municipal wastewater treatment plants contribute to one third of the total nutrient load to the Baltic Sea, being one of the major causes of eutrophication. Therefore, mitigation of their excessive nutrient loads is recognised as one of the priority actions due to its cost efficiency and easiness to monitor the progress. HELCOM is taking a step-wise approach in order to elaborate a comprehensive list of wastewater treatment plants, in which municipal wastewater treatment plants discharging directly to the Baltic Sea, and not yet fulfilling relevant HELCOM requirements are addressed as the first step in project prioritisation.

Another key issue is the elaboration of a list of the agricultural pollution hot spots not fulfilling the HELCOM requirements. Agriculture remains a major source of nutrient inputs to the Baltic Sea and is mainly considered a diffuse source of pollution, as the nutrients affecting the Baltic Sea enter indirectly via runoff in the watershed area. The impacts of agriculture can be reduced by means of broad application of Good Agricultural Practices at farmlands within the catchment of the Baltic Sea. Nevertheless, intensified development of industrial production of cattle, pigs and poultry within the Baltic Sea area has led to the creation of a new segment of pollution point sources, contributing significantly to the amount of nutrient loads.  Therefore, these can be addressed in the same manner as industrial point sources, for example through establishment of the list of priority hot spots to be remediated first.

I strongly believe that a programme of actions designed to reduce pollution outside HELCOM countries should also be developed over the coming two years, since significant pollution reaches the Baltic Sea via transboundary waters or in the form of long-range airborne pollution. In this endeavour HELCOM shall actively use bilateral and multilateral projects, existing financing mechanisms, and international agreements.

I would like to conclude my statement by saying that one sea and a common European space unite us. Ultimately, as the world itself is not that big, we should seek to apply our Baltic experiences, knowledge and priorities not only at the European level but also globally. We hope that the joint activities will help find efficient and balanced approaches for the successful implementation of the prioritised goals, as well as creating appropriate and worthy responses to the new challenges we now face - in the same way that HELCOM has responded to challenges many times in the past.

With this, I would like to invite your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, to join me in a toast to the broader and deeper co-operation between all the HELCOM countries for the protection of the Baltic Sea. I very much count on your support during my Chairmanship.