Baltic leaders under pressure to save sick sea

Laura Vinha Yahoo News 9 Feb 10;

HELSINKI (AFP) – Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other leaders from around the Baltic Sea hold a summit in Helsinki on Wednesday under growing pressure to clean up one of the world's most polluted seas.

Over-fished, surrounded by dirty industry and uncared for, the brackish sea is so toxic that pregnant women should not to eat the fish that are caught in the Baltic, according to Greenpeace.

The marine life is being decimated, researchers say. One hundred years ago there were about 100,000 grey seals in the Baltic but but by the 1980s the population had fallen to 2-3,000 because of hunting and pollution that made females infertile.

Putin and his counterparts from Estonia, Denmark and Norway, the presidents of Latvia and Lithuania, and Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf will discuss how to save the sick sea at the meeting hosted by Finland's President Tarja Halonen, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen and the Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG).

Environmentalists are disappointed that neither Germany nor Poland are sending a top leader to the summit, but they also insist that those who do attend must put into action already agreed plans.

"We know exactly what needs to be done," Sampsa Vilhunen, head of Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Finland's marine programme, told AFP. "Let's now start implementing what's already been agreed. After that, we can evaluate whether or not that's enough."

Organisers of the Helsinki summit say a range of companies, foundations and individuals have already made more than 130 promises of action to save the Baltic. Businesses have promised innovations to recycle nutrients from waste-water and technology to improve communications between vessels and local authorities to enhance safety.

Some 90 million people live around the Baltic Sea. Eutrophication -- the overconcentration of nutrients caused by sewage effluent and agricultural run-off carrying fertilizers into the sea -- over-fishing and the increasing marine traffic are the main threats to be tackled.

The shallow, semi-enclosed sea takes far longer than many other large bodies of water to flush out harmful substances and this has increased the toxic concentrations in fish, according to the Greenpeace group.

But there are also opportunities and sustainable industrial development could help protect the Baltic, said Mari Walls who heads the marine research centre at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).

"The Baltic Sea has a lot to offer when it comes to developing environmentally sustainable technology," she said, citing the potential of algae, a product of eutrophication, as a base for biodiesel.

The European Union and the nine countries with a Baltic Sea coastline -- Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany -- already cooperate to protect the marine environment through the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM).

But critics say the body's good intentions have been slow to translate into concrete measures, and its action plan, aimed at restoring the sea to a good state by 2021, is lagging.

"There is a lack of real results. We haven't seen the action needed to meet those ambitions that have been presented within the Baltic Sea strategy," said Greenpeace ocean campaigner Jan Isakson.

Environmentalists say countries need to set aside national agendas in favour of the best interests of the Baltic Sea.

"What has been obvious over the years is that practically no country speaks with the voice of the Baltic Sea; they all speak with the voice of their own country and national interests," said WWF's Vilhunen.

Russia is currently the chair of HELCOM. The next test of international commitment to the Baltic comes in May when it holds a ministerial meeting in Moscow.

Baltic Sea States Seek Clean-Up; Russia Expands Oil
Brett Young, PlanetArk 10 Feb 10;

HELSINKI - Political and business leaders meet in Helsinki on Wednesday to spur efforts to clean up the Baltic sea, which has suffered from decades of pollution and is a focus of Russia's oil and gas expansion plans.

The Baltic, which organizers call the most polluted sea in the world, remains for adjacent countries a major destination for untreated sewage and many chemical pollutants, including agricultural waste that causes blooms of algae that choke marine life.

It is also facing rising sea traffic. The Russian port of Ust Luga is being expanded and will eventually handle almost one-fifth of Russia's total petroleum products exports as the country seeks more European business.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will be among the participants in Helsinki.

Organizers said they had received close to 140 commitments from companies, NGOs and individuals ahead of the Baltic Sea Action Summit (BSAS), and were focused on getting a strong political will to follow through on past promises.

"To really make it happen at the ministerial level and at every other level we need this kind of joint push so it gets critical mass," said Saara Kankaanrinta, secretary general of the Baltic Sea Action Group foundation, one of the summit's organizers.

Kankaanrinta said organizers were not seeking cash donations from business participants but rather pro bono work or contributions. She cited as an example work done by IBM on improving navigation technology for Baltic sea traffic.

Political interest in the Baltic has grown of late as the start of construction nears for the Nord Stream pipeline, which will transport 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany when completed in 2012.

The pipeline has all necessary government approvals and needs only the blessing of Finnish environmental authorities for construction to proceed. The decision is expected later this week.

ACTIONS, NOT WORDS

The one-day summit is hosted by Finland and gathers a number of national leaders along with heads of businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

It builds on a 2007 meeting of the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM), whose mandate is to protect the Baltic marine environment, where regional countries agreed to cut pollution and restore the Baltic's "good ecological status" by 2021.

Environmental group WWF said it was a good sign that the meeting had reached such a high political level, and the focus should be on enacting past promises rather than making new ones. "We have never been happy on the same day that something has been written or agreed, only when the implementation starts," said Sampsa Vilhunen, marine program head at WWF Finland.

"It will probably take 25 or 30 years for the marine basin to get better. People also have to realize that we are not going to reach a pristine environment ever again, because there's nearly 90 million people living on Baltic sea," he added.

Vilhunen said a test of the summit's effectiveness would the results of the next HELCOM ministerial meeting in Moscow in May, which will report on progress made in the 2007 plan.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)