Posted on julio, 01 2013

The Baltic Sea Region is one of the richest and most educated regions in the world, and several surveys have shown that there is a massive public and political support for taking action to save the sea. So, why are governments failing to deliver upon their commitments to save the Baltic Sea?

Six years ago, environment ministers from the nine countries around the Baltic Sea, signed the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP). The plan was an ambitious attempt to ‘save the sea’ by joining forces in the region to agree on a set of “actions” to be taken by each country to reach a good ecological status of the Baltic Sea by 2021.

Now ministers are planning to meet again in October this year “to evaluate the effectiveness of the national programmes and to review the progress towards the ecological objectives describing a Baltic Sea in good ecological status.”

Preparations for this ministerial meeting are currently taking place but as highlighted in this report, all countries are lagging far behind schedule in their implementation of the plan. This report aims at providing some suggestions for remedy.