Governed by special hydrographical and climatic conditions, the Baltic Sea is one of the planet’s largest bodies of brackish water. It is composed of salt water from the North East Atlantic and fresh water from rivers and streams draining from an area four times larger than the Sea itself. This highly sensitive and interdependent marine ecosystem gives rise to unique flora and fauna.
 

Due to the special hydrographical and climatic conditions, the Baltic Sea is vulnerable. Over the past 100 years, the naturel environment of the Baltic Sea has degraded dramatically.
 

Ecosystem benefits

In the Baltic region many of us enjoy coastal holidays and some are even lucky enough to have a vacation homes situated near the coastline. Both our enjoyment of the sea and the price tag on our seaside home is directly dependent on the quality of the water. Would you swim or sail in the Baltic Sea if it was a lifeless dump or a stinking soup of poisonous algae?
 

These benefits obtained by the sea are examples of environmental or “ecosystem services”. The term ecosystem describes a community of animals and plants interacting with each other and with their physical environment such as soils, water, nutrients and all types of living organisms. Healthy ecosystems have always performed a multitude of essential functions for human communities –ecosystem services.

Nine countries surround the Baltic Sea - Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. The region is home to more than 85 million people (of whom 15 million live on the coast) and diverse political, social and economic realities. 
 

The most recent of these, the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, was the first EU ‘macro-regional’ strategy.  It was created to address ‘the urgent environmental challenges arising from the increasingly visible degradation of the Baltic Sea’ and was adopted by the European Council in October 2009.

HELCOM -  the governing body of the "Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area" – has all of the nine Baltic coastal countries as well as the European Community as its contracting parties. HELCOM has in place an ambitious programme to restore the ‘Good Ecological Status’ of the Baltic marine environment by 2021. 

Other significant political frameworks for the health of the sea include the EU’s Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Both have set up targets to reach ‘Good Ecological Status’ for all European waters by 2015 and ‘Good Environmental Status’ of all European seas by 2020 respectively. 

The Common EU policies for agriculture and for fisheries are also critical in terms of their influence on domestic incentives for dominant drivers of environmental deterioration of the sea. They also have an enormous social and economic impact on the region, given their size and influence.