Jochen Lamp
Head of the Board
OSTSEESTIFTUNG, German Baltic Sea Foundation
Germany
Georg Nikelski
CEO and Board Member
OSTSEESTIFTUNG, German Baltic Sea Foundation
Germany
nikelski@ostseestiftung.de
For half a century, the Baltic Sea “enjoyed” the questionable reputation of being the most polluted sea of our globe. Since then, grace to the efforts of states, scientists, and the civil society of the Baltic Sea countries, many joint efforts were made to bend the curve of ecological decline. A major driver and change agent was the creation and 50 years of support for the Helsinki Convention, the first global environmental agreement for a shared regional sea basin. The Helsinki Commission and its work has deleted many major pollution hot spots from the map and brought us back some iconic species like the grey seals or the white-tailed eagles. And it has changed the image of our sea towards being a role model and forerunner for high environmental standards in Europe and beyond. Examples are globally binding standards for ship traffic (Particular Sensitive Sea Area – PSSA, Nitrogen, and sulphur Emission Control Area – NECA, SECA) and Helcom network of Baltic Sea Protected Areas.
All this was important and necessary, but unfortunately this is not enough: the overarching effects of excessive nutrient overload through agricultural practices and wastewater have dramatically reduced the self-cleaning capacity of large coastal sea areas and led to dead zones in many parts of the sea floors. Climate change triggered the depletion of our fish stocks such as that of cod and herring which depend on oxygen-rich cold water. As a result of global warming the sea water temperature as well as the sea level rose faster and higher than in most other seas on our globe.
Due to the hydraulic constraints of the sea with the narrow Danish Straits as a bottleneck, the water exchange with North Sea and Atlantic Ocean occurs only once every 35 years. This demands from us a long-term perspective if we want to observe and measure the recovery of biodiversity and good environmental status of our sea. New challenges are emerging, that need as much vigilance as the newly resharpened focus on military threats in our region. The risk of military activities in the sea and that of sabotage to infrastructure or to ships carrying hazardous substances has become real.
Disregard of so far jointly agreed international ship security standards by deploying fleets of substandard oil tankers brings the shipping risks of the 1990s back to the agenda of 2025.
The deployment of giant offshore wind parks wherever possible further limits preserving the sea areas needed for securing the recovery of a good environmental status of the Baltic Sea. Despite high budgets for compensation measures for minimizing human impacts from industrial or infrastructure projects hardly any significant effect on the marine habitats can be observed.
Today we desperately need a revival of the joint Baltic Sea spirit to defend and sharpen our toolset for a healthy Baltic Sea. The EU has somewhat paved the way with Habitat and Marine strategy framework Directives and recently with the restoration law that demands 30% of land and sea areas to be restored to a natural status and the decade of restoration. On the other hand, in Germany hard-fought nature conservation standards are easily being sacrificed for seemingly more important and urgent projects, e.g. the construction of LNG terminals or placement of military infrastructure.
To make the green deal reality, a lot of political will and resources are needed. Part of the effort should also be to set aside the necessary sea space in the frame of Maritime Spatial Planning for establishing effective marine protected areas and blue exchange corridors to connect these sanctuaries such as migration corridors or spawning areas.
How much effort is needed to make the restoration goals tangible reality may be illustrated by the example of our Baltic Sea Foundation (OSTSEESTIFTUNG) in Germany: the foundation together with scientific institutes of the region has just started a 10-year project to restore former coastal peatlands of around 1.000 hectares, with a finance volume of 30 million Euros. Just to stop the CO2 emission from the drained (mainly agricultural) peatlands in Germany with their high CO2 emissions by 2050 would need at least 10.000 hectares to be rewetted every of the 25 years remaining until 2050. The outgoing German Federal Government had acknowledged that the restoration of peatlands, especially in coastal areas, can contribute substantially to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2. Consequently, the rewetting of peatlands plays an important role in the “Action Programme for nature-based climate protection” which has a budget of 3.5 billion Euros. Hands-on measures to abate climate change effects like the aforementioned and securing the needed areas for effective marine biodiversity conservation should further be in the top of the to-do-list for German and Baltic governments.