Investments needed to clean up sea

  • 2010-02-10
  • From wire reports

TALLINN - Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other leaders from around the Baltic Sea, from Estonia, Denmark, Norway, Latvia, and Lithuania, gathered for a summit in Helsinki on Feb. 10 as pressure builds to clean up the Baltic, considered one of the world’s most polluted and endangered seas, reports AFP. “Over-fished, surrounded by dirty industry and uncared for, the brackish sea is so toxic that pregnant women should not eat the fish that are caught in the Baltic,” claims Greenpeace. The marine life is being decimated, researchers say.

“We don’t know all the reasons why seals vanished from Poland’s Baltic coast,” says Iwona Pawliczka, a biologist at Gdansk University’s marine research station on Poland’s Hel peninsula. “A century ago there were about 100,000 grey seals in the Baltic. In the 1980s their population fell to 2,000 - 3,000,” she explained, adding that hunting and chemical pollutants that rendered females infertile decimated populations. While colonies in the northern Baltic near Sweden are now about 20,000-strong, Pawliczka says just a few dozen seals, most of them offspring bred at the Hel station, live along Poland’s Baltic coast.
The fate of the Harbor Porpoise, a small dolphin once common across the Baltic, is even more precarious. Hunting, fishnets as well as chemical and noise pollution have all but wiped them out. With experts estimating that fewer than 250 remain in Baltic waters, in 2008 they were declared a critically endangered species.

A computer screen glowing with satellite tracking of vessels across the Baltic reveals intense traffic, with in excess of an estimated 2,000 ships on its waters on any given day. “We’re lucky we’ve never had a major fuel spill on the Baltic, and it is being precisely monitored to keep it that way,” says Port of Gdynia harbor master Andrzej Kaleta.

Pioneering gravel extraction in the Baltic and planning a massive wind farm in an area where Swedish and Polish territorial waters meet, Mieczyslaw Twardowski says his company, Baltex, has no choice but to meet international environmental norms if it hopes to do business. “The environmental impact of our activities is strictly monitored and as we are operating in an area requiring approval from Sweden, it is critical for our impact to be within acceptable norms,” he said.

Baltex is set to extract seven million tons of high quality gravel from the Baltic Sea floor over the next three years. “We also want to erect 260 windmills, each with a six megawatt power capacity for a total 1,560 megawatts - the power of a nuclear reactor,” Twardowski says of the 20-year project projected to cost an estimated 4 billion euros, which he hopes to start in 2012.
Controversy has also raged over the possible negative environmental impact of the NordStream natural gas pipeline Russia and Germany plan to build across the Baltic Sea floor.

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 have sent 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 program, told AFP. “Let’s now start implementing what’s already been agreed. After that, we can evaluate whether or not that’s enough.”

Organizers 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 from destruction. Businesses have promised innovations to recycle nutrients from waste-water, and technology to improve communications between vessels and local authorities to enhance safety.
“Law and regulations are essential, but if people have no or very limited awareness of how their actions affect the environment, regulations alone can’t work,” says University of Gdansk marine biologist Professor Maciej Wolowicz.

About 90 million people live around the Baltic Sea. Eutrophication - the over-concentration 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 Greenpeace. “It’s like a ‘desertification’ of the Baltic Sea bed and it is relatively wide-spread,” says Wolowicz. He insists education is key to reversing the process.

But there are also opportunities, and sustainable industrial development could help protect the Baltic, said Mari Walls who heads the marine research center at the Finnish Environment Institute. “The Baltic Sea has a lot to offer when it comes to developing environmentally sustainable technology,” she said, citing the potential of algea, 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.
But progress by the group is questionable. Critics say the group’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 favor of the best interests of the Baltic Sea.