Not all gloom for the Baltic
The Baltic Sea has serious environmental problems, but for the first time on record nutrient emissions are on the decline.
The inter-governmental Helsinki Commission for the protection of the Baltic marine environment reported last spring that for the first time on record the upward trend of eutrophying phosphorus and nitrogen emissions has taken a downturn. The new municipal sewage works in St Petersburg are fulfilling their promise. A lot remains to be done, however, before it can be said with any certainty that the Baltic has turned the corner.Lea Kauppi, the Director General of the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) stresses that the Baltic’s sorry state is compounded by its unusual characteristics.
“Since the Baltic is shallow and almost cut off from the open sea, in many ways it’s more like a huge lake than a sea,” she explains.
The most serious problem facing the Baltic is eutrophication –the disruption of natural ecosystems with nutrient emissions from man-made sources in the sea’s catchment area. Most of the Baltic basin is densely populated and industrialised, with a lot of agriculture, too. So there are lots of sources of surplus nutrients, especially where sewage is not efficiently treated.
The Gulf of Finland is one of the worst affected areas. Dead zones with no oxygen have been spreading on the sea floor, and toxic algal blooms contaminate its waters and shores each summer, keeping would-be bathers out of the water.
Farmers on board
Finland has been involved internationally in technical and financial collaboration to curb major sources of nutrient pollution such as municipal sewage from the Russian city of St Petersburg.
“We’re getting such point sources under control, but it’s harder to limit the runoff of excess nutrients from diffuse sources such as farmland,” says Kauppi.
In Finland agriculture is by far the biggest source of nutrient emissions. But Finnish farmers are well aware of this problem, and willing to take responsibility.
Kauppi believes that technical fixes can help farmers use manure and artificial fertilisers more effectively. Leaving steep slopes unploughed, and
creating new wetlands and vegetation buffer zones along watercourses can also keep nutrients out of streams, rivers and ultimately the sea.
Saving our shared sea
Since the Baltic is shared by so many countries, it is vital that environmental protection and research are coordinated internationally. Finland works closely with HELCOM, the inter-governmental Helsinki Commission for the protection of the Baltic marine environment.
HELCOM has launched a wideranging international action plan to improve the state of the Baltic Sea. To highlight the urgency of this work, HELCOM also aims to count the economic costs of inaction, in the same
way that the Stern Report spotlighted the astronomical cost of inaction on climate change.
By Fran Weaver
Photos Metsähallitus, Kreetta Järvenpää
