Interim Report – WG Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB)

30 BSPCYEARSBaltic Sea Parliamentary ConferenceBSPC Working Group onClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB)Interim ReportAugust 202130 BSPCYEARSBaltic Sea Parliamentary ConferenceBSPC Working Group onClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB)Interim ReportAugust 20212Interim Report on Climate Changeand Biodiversity for the 30th BSPC© Stockholm, Schwerin, August 2021Texts: Working Group, Experts in the WG meetings,Governments of the Baltic Sea States, CecilieTenfjord-Toftby, Bodo Bahr, Marc Hertel, DanAlvarsson, Jördis PalmeEditing: Bodo Bahr, Jördis PalmeLayout: produktionsbüro TINUSBaltic Sea Parliamentary Conference The Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) was established in 1991 as a forum for political dialogue betweenwww.bspc.net parliamentarians from the Baltic Sea Region. The BSPC aims at raising awareness and opinion on issues of cur-rent political interest and relevance for the Baltic Sea Region. It promotes and drives various initiatives and effortsto support a sustainable environmental, social and economic development of the Baltic Sea Region. It strives to-wards enhancing the visibility of the Baltic Sea Region and its issues in a wider European context.The BSPC gathers parliamentarians from 11 national parliaments, 11 regional parliaments and 5 parliamenta-ry organisations around the Baltic Sea. The BSPC thus constitutes a unique parliamentary bridge between all theEU- and non-EU countries of the Baltic Sea Region.The BSPC ’s external interfaces include parliamentary, governmental, sub-regional and other organisations inBaltic Sea Parliamentary Conference the Baltic Sea Region and the Northern Dimension area, among them the CBSS, HELCOM, the Northern Di-Bodo Bahr mension Partnership in Health and Social Well-Being (NDPHS), the Baltic Sea Labour Forum (BSLF), the Bal-Secretary General tic Sea States Sub-regional Cooperation (BSSSC) and the Baltic Development Forum.+49 171 5512557 The BSPC shall initiate and guide political activities in the region; support and strengthen democratic institu-bodo.bahr@bspcmail.net tions in the participating states; improve dialogue between governments, parliaments and civil society; strengthenwww.bspc.net the common identity of the Baltic Sea Region by means of close co-operation between national and regional par-liaments on the basis of equality; and initiate and guide political activities in the Baltic Sea Region, endowingthem with additional democratic legitimacy and parliamentary authority.BSPC Secretariat The political recommendations of the annual Parliamentary Conferences are expressed in a Conference Reso-Schlossgartenallee 15 lution adopted by consensus by the Conference. The adopted Resolution shall be submitted to the governments19061 Schwerin of the Baltic Sea Region, the CBSS and the EU, and disseminated to other relevant national, regional and localGermany stakeholders in the Baltic Sea Region and its neighbourhood.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 3ContentsContents ...........................................................................3Introduction .........................................................................5Interim Report .......................................................................81. Purpose ........................................................................82. Mandate ........................................................................93. Scope of Work – Programme and Work in Progress ......................................104. Working Group Meetings 1-3 ......................................................125. Intergovernmental Survey ..........................................................636. Best Practices – Examples ..........................................................637. Political Recommendations ........................................................648. Excerpts from Statements of the Governments of the Baltic Sea Region to the 29th BSPC .........66List of Members .....................................................................92WG Secretariat ......................................................................964 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 5IntroductionLadies and gentlemen,The BSPC Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity(WG CCB) was launched at the 29th Digital Baltic Sea Parlia-mentary Conference on 24 August 2020. The Working Groupis constituted under the auspices of the Standing Committee ofthe Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference in accordance with theBSPC Rules of Procedure. The primary outcome of the work ofthe group will consist of a number of political recommendationson the topic of climate change and biodiversity.Climate change is a global phenomenon that obviously needsto be tackled by means of international cooperation and mutualagreements, but it also requires us to find sustainable solutions ata regional level and in particular at local level. I am honoured tobe appointed chair of this Working Group and I am convincedthat we, by learning from each other and by studying best practiceexamples of successful projects, can contribute in a positive wayin this most important task to mitigating and counteracting theeffects of climate change, as well as preserving biodiversity.When the Working Group was established it was decided that itshould focus on the environmental aspect of climate change andbiodiversity as well as on innovation, technology and best prac-tices. Of course, we had all hoped to be able to meet each otherin person and to study interesting projects on location, but dueto the COVID-19-pandemic, this has not yet been possible. TheWorking Group has therefore, up until today, held digital meetingswhere we have been given valuable knowledge about the presentsituation concerning climate change, the status of the Baltic Sea,and not least a number of concrete projects intended to improvethe environment in the sea and on land. For example, we havelearned about the Swedish projects “Living Coast – Regaininggood ecological status in coastal areas” and “ElectriVillage”, a so-lar- powered hydrogen refuelling station in Mariestad. The work-ing group has also learned about sustainable and environmentallyfriendly fishing in Iceland, and a local project in the Åland Islandsaiming to strengthen biological diversity in the sea.When it comes to climate change and biodiversity, it is most im-portant that we include the perspective of young people. As part6 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportof this ambition, a Baltic Sea Parliamentary Youth Forum will be arranged in which the participantsare encouraged to give recommendations that will be presented to the Working Group. These recom-mendations will be taken into consideration in our upcoming work and final report.Normally, the Working Groups within the BSPC have a two-year mandate. Because of the COV-ID-19-pandemic, the members of the group have not yet been able to meet each other in person, andat our meeting on 31 May 2021, it was therefore decided that the Working Group ́s mandate shouldbe extended until 2023. This also means that during the coming two years we will hopefully haveseveral opportunities to study best practice examples on site, and that the quality and outcome of ourwork for that reason will be even better.This Interim Report is an overview of the first results of our work. The primary focus is on the politicalrecommendations which were elaborated during the meetings and were forwarded to the 30th BalticSea Parliamentary Conference on 30 August 2021. This report should thus be considered a strategicsummary of our work so far. Finally, I would like to thank the two vice-chairs of the working group,Ms Liz Mattsson from the Åland Islands and Mr Kolbeinn Óttarsson Proppé from Iceland, for theirvaluable contributions. Furthermore, I would like to thank all the members of the Working Group fortheir commitment, constructive discussions, and a genuinely pleasant atmosphere.Cecilie Tenfjord-ToftbyMember of the Parliament of SwedenChairwoman of the Working Group on Climate Change and BiodiversityClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 78 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportInterim ReportBSPC Working Group on Climate Change and BiodiversityThe overarching objective of the Working Group is to elaborate political positions and recommenda-tions pertaining to climate change and biodiversity.The Working Group and its members should furthermore – according to their mandate determinedby the Standing Committee of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference - aim at raising the politicalattention on Climate Change and Biodiversity and contribute to the exchange of knowledge and bestpractices within its area of responsibility.For this purpose, the Working Group should establish and maintain contacts with relevant institu-tions, organisations and other actors in the Baltic Sea Region and furthermore help to actively drivecooperation in the Baltic Sea Region as well as to follow and influence political initiatives.1. PurposeThe purpose of this interim report is to present a first set of political recommendations from the BSPCWorking Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity (WG CCB) to the 30th BSPC in the year 2021.This is pursuant to the mandate of the WG.The report also gives a cursory account of some challenges that the WG has discussed with a numberof experts.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 92. MandateThe BSPC Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity (WG CCB) was established - basedon a corresponding decision of the BSPC Standing Committee - by the Digital Baltic Sea Parliamen-tary Conference on 24 August 2020 at its 29th annual conference.The resolution points out that the group has the task to submit a first report at the 30th BSPC – witha particular focus on the need for joint and cross-border cooperation –, concerning enhanced solu-tions to preserve the biodiversity inherent to the entire Baltic Sea region and to mitigate the effects ofclimate change with special emphasis on• the state of policies and strategies concerning climate change and biodiversity in the Baltic Sea re-gion;• best practices in addressing the interlinked challenges of biodiversity and climate change with aspecific focus on the Baltic Sea;• innovations and measures to tackle climate change and preserve biodiversity;• climate change adaptation and challenges for science, technology and the economy• ensuring efficient and environment-friendly transport and energy supply solutionsAccording to the resolution, the working group shall concentrate its attention on the environmentalside of climate change and biodiversity as well as on innovation, technology and further economic as-pects.10 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report3. Scope of Work – Programme and Work inProgressIn accordance with this decision, the WG CCB agreed on the followingScope of Work - Topics, Themes and PrioritiesGlobal climate change and related challenges are currently central policy areas in many countries. TheParis Agreement, national and multinational strategies and a fundamentally changed public awarenessare setting the framework for far-reaching measures that will have a profound impact on the futuredevelopment of many countries.It is the task of this Working Group to support this process by means of optimised parliamentarycooperation in order to achieve the most far-reaching and rapid progress possible in meeting thesechallenges in the entire Baltic Sea region.More intensive cooperation, also at the parliamentary level, can and should further strengthen currentefforts in individual countries and international bodies, and optimise the basis for necessary decisionsin the Baltic Sea region.The Nordic Council Session in Stockholm focused on climate change, and the Nordic Council’sCommittee for a Sustainable Nordic Region is working intensively with this issue.The Baltic Assembly has also announced that climate change is among its priorities for the next year.Furthermore, the issue is in line with the latest ambitious goals in the EU and beyond.The European Commission recently presented its long-term strategic vision for a prosperous,modern, competitive and climate-neutral economy by 2050. Following the invitations of the Eu-ropean Parliament and the European Council, the Commission’s vision for a climate-neutral fu-ture covers nearly all EU policies. It is in line with the Paris Agreement objective to keep theglobal temperature increase to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C.In the light of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with a focus onbiodiversity (SDG15), climate (SDG13) and oceans (SDG14), the UN Decade of Ocean Science forSustainable Development and the 2020 UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, on 17-30May 2021, the issue of climate change and biodiversity are of utmost importance. The WG shouldconsider the conclusions of the UN Biodiversity Conference and the post-2020 global biodiversityframework in its efforts.The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM) has been closely focussing onissues of both biodiversity and climate change as well as its impact on the marine environment ofthe Baltic Sea region specifically and has stressed the importance of recognising climate change as across-cutting topic within the updated Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP). In addition, the HELCOMExpert Network on Climate Change (EN CLIME) is preparing the Climate Change Fact Sheet finalClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 11report to be adopted in 2021. Moreover, both biodiversity and climate change are featured as a prom-inent issue area within the currently developed HELCOM Science Agenda. Given the intensive workand accumulated HELCOM expertise on these topics, the WG should also closely follow the climatechange- and biodiversity-related work conducted within relevant HELCOM bodies and continue thelong-standing tradition of cooperation and exchange between the BSPC and HELCOM.The goal of the WG should be to create closer cooperation in this field and to facilitate far-reachingdecisions through parliamentary support in the whole Baltic Sea region.In doing so, the WG will focus its framework, topics, themes and priorities on Climate Change andBiodiversity mainly on regional aspects of the Baltic Sea region.The scope of work of the Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity should cover, but notbe limited to, the following main items:A. Climate Change and Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea region –an analysis of the current situationClimate change and biodiversity policies differ in the various countries of the Baltic Sea region. Inorder to find a common platform for deliberations on common activities, the working group needsto elaborate a common framework for discussion by collecting and discussing information about thecurrent situation in the Baltic Sea region countries, and how climate change has affected biodiversityand climate change policies in the region.B. Climate Change and Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea region - best practice examplesThe WG should, through e.g. expert presentations, study visits and questionnaires, collect and com-pile examples of best practices and measures, as well as follow and influence political initiatives.It is commonly assumed that climate change and biodiversity are interconnected. Climate change isaffecting species, ecosystems and biodiversity while biodiversity plays a role in reducing the negativeeffects of climate change. The WG should cover different perspectives of climate change and biodiver-sity, as well as the impact on land-based and marine ecosystems.The aim is to get an overview of the state of current policies in the Baltic Sea region and to identifywhere common action is possible and further action is needed. This will form one part of the basis forthe political recommendations of the WG. It should also be examined how the BSR countries couldbenefit from the experiences of other countries and measures.12 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportC. Climate Change and Biodiversity in the Baltic Sea region –innovations and measures to deal with climate change, biodiversity and climate change adaptationThe WG should, by means of e.g. expert presentations, study visits and questionnaires, collect andcompile examples of measures to promote common progress in reaching the set goals concerningclimate change and biodiversity and how to deal with the challenges of climate change, biodiversityand climate change adaptation.The aim is to identify measures that have been undertaken, to assess achievements and to studyinnovative solutions for dealing with the impact of climate change on science, technology and theeconomy. This will also serve to identify gaps and any need for further measures.The results of this process will form another part of the basis for the political recommendations ofthe WG. The WG should further help to actively drive cooperation and develop recommendations toimprove collaboration and exchange of information between Baltic Sea countries in matters related toclimate change, biodiversity and climate change adaptation between various authorities, organisationsand other operators.D. Climate Change and Biodiversity - political recommendationsThe primary outcome of the activities of the WG is to elaborate joint political recommendations to speedup and specify measures concerning climate change and biodiversity. The political recommendationsshould be based on an assessment of the specific role and added value that the parliamentarians cancontribute to the promotion of these policy fields in their countries. The political recommendationsconstitute a manifestation of the joint political push that parliamentarians of the BSPC can exert onthe governments of the Baltic Sea region.4. Working Group Meetings 1-3Since the BSPC Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity was launched by the Digital29th BSPC on 24 August 2020, two meetings with experts took place in digital form. Currently, up tofour more meetings are planned. During the Working Group meetings different thematic prioritieswere chosen and reflected in expert presentations. A third meeting dealt with procedural questionsconcerning the future work of the Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity. Due to thedecision that the 31st annual conference would be held earlier than usual and take place in June, con-sidering the situation that because of the pandemic only digital meetings could be held and plannedso far and given the great importance of the topic, the Working Group chose to ask the StandingCommittee to expand their mandate by another year in order to achieve a higher-quality end reportthat would be useful for governments, business and civil society.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 13Speeches and presentations of the meetings can be found on the BSPC website. The links to the expertpresentations are incorporated in the following text.4.1 The Working Group CCB held its first meeting on 16 November 2020 in digitalform. More than 50 participants – mainly delegations from the Åland Islands, the BalticAssembly, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, the German Bundestag, Hamburg, Iceland,Kaliningrad, Latvia, Lithuania, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Nordic Council, Norway,Poland, the Russian Federation, Schleswig-Holstein and Sweden – participated. Themeeting was chaired by Ms Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby, MP Sweden, Chairwoman of the WG.WG Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby pointed out that the task of the WG, based on the resolu-tion of the BSPC, was to submit the first report at the 30th BSPC Conference – with a particular focuson the need for joint and cross-border cooperation. She expressed her regret that, due to a pandemic,the meeting – originally planned in Stockholm with visits in appropriate facilities – had had to bemoved to digital space.14 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportMs Tenfjord-Toftby also noted that the report would concentrate on enhanced solutions to preservethe biodiversity inherent to the entire Baltic Sea region and to mitigate the effects of climate changewith particular emphasis on the state of policies and strategies concerning climate change and biodi-versity in the Baltic Sea region. Ms Tenfjord-Toftby listed as further areas of particular interest for theWG: best practices in addressing the interlinked challenges of biodiversity and climate change with aspecific focus on the Baltic Sea; innovations and measures to tackle climate change and preserve biodi-versity; climate change adaptation and challenges for science, technology and the economy as well as,last but not least, ensuring efficient and environment-friendly transport and energy supply solutions.The Chairwoman emphasised that the working group would concentrate its attention on the envi-ronmental side of climate change and biodiversity as well as on innovation, technology and furthereconomic aspects.Expert presentationsMr Jan Terstad, Deputy Director General, Ministry of the Environment, Division for Natural En-vironmentPresentation: Our Baltic Conference and Biodiversity Summit – outcome from two recent conferencesOur Baltic Conference and BiodiversitySummit – outcome from two recentconferencesJan TerstadDeputy Director General, Ministry of the Environment,Division for Natural EnvironmentMinistry of the Environment 1Mr Jan Terstad said that he was working in the Ministry of the Environment in Sweden and wasattending this meeting on behalf of the Swedish deputy prime minister and the minister for the envi-ronment, Ms Isabella Lövin. Before beginning his presentation, Mr Terstad had to admit that he hadnot personally attended any of the events he was going to speak about. He was well informed, though,and the colleagues who had been there had given him information to share with the working group.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 15The speaker summarised in advance that he would be presenting two conferences, the “Our Baltic”Conference and the Biodiversity Summit, along with their results. The former had been handled bythe EU Commission together with Lithuania, organised by DG Environment and DG Mare. The in-vitation by Commissioner Linkevičius had concluded that, in line with the European Green Deal andin particular the recent EU Biodiversity Strategy and Zero Pollution Ambition, the conference wouldfocus on how to reduce the pressure from fisheries and to decrease the input of pollutants, such asnutrients or litter and other contaminants including pharmaceuticals. A third goal of the conferencewas to achieve further tangible progress, as Mr Linkevičius had written, by creating new synergies andjoining forces between those in charge of environmental protection and those in charge of sustainablefisheries as well as agriculture. The focus of the “Our Baltic” Conference had been on sectoral man-agement and legislation, to drive measures to restore the Baltic marine environment. It was not reallypossible, he explained, to improve the Baltic environment only with research and money. Action bypeople, the society and the private sector was required in order to effect change. That was at the coreof the Green Deal and also part of the Green Recovery relating to the COVID-19 situation. The needfor sectoral management was very much at the heart of this conference.The outcome from the “Our Baltic” Conference had been the ministerial declaration containingcommitments on measures to strengthen biodiversity, to reduce eutrophication as well as pollution ofhazardous substances but also on sustainable fisheries and providing adequate funding. The ministersresponsible for the environment, fisheries and agriculture had been invited, and all ten ministers fromseven out of eight Baltic EU countries had signed this ministerial declaration. Mr Terstad noted thatit was available on the Commission’s website.Moving on to the other conference, the UN Biodiversity Summit from the 30 September, Mr Terstadmentioned that it had been convened virtually at the level of heads of state and governments underthe theme “Urgent Action on Biodiversity for Sustainable Development”. This meeting had takenplace on the margins of the opening of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly in New YorkCity. The theme for the summit had been urgent action on biodiversity for sustainable development,to highlight the action at the highest levels in support of the development of the CBD post-2020framework. He mentioned that the CBD post-2015 had been postponed due to the present situation.At this point, it was not known when this conference of the parties in CBD would be held, but theprocess was continuing. That was the context of the Biodiversity Summit, Mr Terstad said.The organisation of the summit was as followed: There was an opening segment, with keynote pres-entations and panel discussions. 48 heads of government and ministers had addressed the plenary.Two leaders’ dialogues had been held, one addressing biodiversity loss in mainstream biodiversity forsustainable development and another dealing with harnessing science, technology and innovationfor capacity building, access and benefit sharing, financing and finally partnerships for biodiversity.Mr Terstad further mentioned that the second leaders’ dialogue had been co-chaired by the Swedishdeputy prime minister and minister for the environment, Ms Isabella Lövin. The outcome of theBiodiversity Summit was no specific declaration but rather the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, signed by75 countries. This, he said, was a positive sign of gathering momentum for this hopefully ambitiouspost-2020 global biodiversity framework. This year, 2020, he underlined, had initially been meantto be a crucial year for biodiversity, not least in reference to the Agenda 2030 and climate change.Unfortunately, that had not really been how it had ended up. This summit on biodiversity had beenexpected to be a crucial milestone, to build momentum. The process in CBD was still going on, he16 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportreiterated, making use of all the technical means, such as virtual meetings or platforms, to keep upthe pace. The Leaders’ Pledge contained commitments to sustainable production and consumption,mainstreaming biodiversity, environmental crimes and more. There was also a high ambition coali-tion that had emerged, Mr Terstad noted, which had also been signed by a great number of leadersof countries.Further referencies:https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/ministerial_declaration_our_baltic_conference.pdfhttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjCwPLV8Y-XyAhUCYcAKHUdGD-8QtwIwC3oECAQQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbd.int%2Farti-cle%2F2020-UN-Biodiversity-Summit&usg=AOvVaw38ZKsC0UgHGKlBj99zfK9xhttps://www.cbd.int/events/unbiodiversitysummit/summary.pdfMr Christoph Humborg, Professor, Baltic Sea CentrePresentation: Is the Baltic Sea ecosystem just a victim to climate change or can it be part of the solution?Climate effects in the Baltic SeaLinks between biodiversity andcarbon sequestrationFrom victim to solutionChristoph HumborgProfessor Christoph Humborg explained that he was the Scientific Director of the Stockholm Univer-sity Baltic Sea Centre. He said that he would be speaking about climate effects in the Baltic Sea, tryingto create links between biodiversity and carbon storage or carbon sequestration. He would outlinehow ocean ecosystems might become in the future significant players in solving the climate changeissue. In this, he would maintain a Baltic perspective but also consider the global point of view.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 17He referred to two very important recent studies, published by two highly important intergovern-mental panels. The first one was from the IPCC, a report on the ocean and cryosphere in a changingclimate. This report provided a very good and comprehensive compilation of the knowledge as itstood at this moment. Prof Humborg mentioned that he had been at the respective conference,having travelled to San Diego. At the meeting, the “grand old lady” Jane Lubchenco had made herpessimistic view known when summarising this report in saying that climate change would make ouroceans higher, warmer, more acidic, that it would produce more heat waves, that the waters wouldhold less oxygen, be less productive and less predictable. The professor reiterated that it was not anoptimistic view of the future. As a matter of fact, he pointed out, the ocean was a key player in theworld climate, taking up over 90 per cent of the heat generated in the world while also taking up some24 per cent of anthropogenic emissions. This was also making the oceans more acidic.The second report he raised was from the intergovernmental panel on biodiversity and ecosystem ser-vices. This also provided a summary for policymakers, outlining how eroding biodiversity representeda threat to the planet and sustainability. These were reports of general scientific information, compiledexcellently and easily accessible.Zeroing in on the Baltic Sea, he summarised the special conditions of that body of water. The BalticSea was a very special sea as it was enclosed, having only a very limited exchange of water throughthe Belt Sea. That meant that the waters stayed in the Baltic Sea for a very long time, some thirtyyears, compared to about three months in the North Sea. It was for that reason, he put in as anaside, that the British had a saying about the solution to pollution being dilution. For the BalticSea, that was not possible. What was in its waters would stay in the area for the aforementionedthirty years. Nutrient contaminants continued to affect the ecosystem. The second special aspectof the Baltic Sea was that, due to this limited exchange of water, there was also very low salinity. Itwas more of a mix between fresh and salt water. At the centre of the Baltic Sea, there was about 20per cent as much salt as in the open ocean while in the north, that was even lower at around 10 percent. The graphic he presented showed the distribution limits of key species of marine animals inthe sea. They were naturally stressed, he explained, as they could hardly live in the low salinity ofthe respective areas of the Baltic Sea. As such, the sea was a naturally stressed and susceptible sys-tem, vulnerable to eutrophication issues but also to climate change. For example, in the Kattegatt,he mentioned, there were about 500 species to be found, reduced to 52 in the central Baltic region.They were naturally stressed by the low salinity, he repeated, making the Baltic a special region interms of biodiversity issues as well.Prof Humborg next briefly explained the concept of Blue Carbon. The fantastic ecosystems in theBaltic Sea were foreseen to store and sequester carbon in a very efficient way. In that, they workedmuch like a forest on land. As to the amount of carbon sequestered, he would mention some globalnumbers later on, but they still needed to be quantified. What was known was that they delivered thiskey ecosystem service, i.e., storing and sequestering carbon, although that had not yet been properlyquantified. The professor went on to explain that the Baltic Sea with its long residence times had beenplagued by eutrophication for decades. This was still the largest threat to the marine ecosystem. Fordecades, massive emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus, especially from agriculture and livestock pro-duction, were enriching the sea. In turn, this led to the substantial algal blooms that were a frequentphenomenon during the summer. When these were sedimenting down to the bottom, the algae weresuffocating these key habitats. Among these habitats, he numbered as examples bladder wracks or18 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportseaweed or mussel banks. Rather than sequestering carbon, they were then emitting carbon. A healthyecosystem, he clarified, could serve as a carbon sink, but a degraded system posed a carbon hazard.New measurements were showing that these posed significant carbon sources.Considering the coastal areas, the professor said that climate change had manifested itself in theseenvironments. Looking at the records of water temperatures, these had risen to a clear degree, for in-stance near the Finnish coast where measurements had been taken at about 30 metres of depth since1926 every week. In the last 20 years, there had been a significant rise of the temperature. Creaturesliving at an average of four degrees centigrade, now they might find themselves at seven degrees cen-tigrade. This significant change equally represented a major threat to these ecosystems and habitats.In the year 2018, he pointed out that there had also been heat waves, especially over Scandinavia.High pressure systems had stayed in place for very long times. At that time, the same station he hadmentioned earlier had measured up to 23 °C at 30 metres below the surface. These sometimes reachedalmost tropical conditions, Prof Humborg explained, eradicating some mussel beds. While they couldcome back, that would take years. The climate models were showing that these heat waves wouldbecome more frequent in the future.Prof Humborg underlined that such phenomena as high temperatures and particularly the heat waveswere adding even more stresses to an already stressed system. As a matter of fact, there was a legacyof eutrophication, meaning that the sediments in the Baltic Sea had been rich with organic matterfor decades of algal blooms. That had led to massive methane emissions, an especially effective green-house gas, about twenty to thirty times more effective than CO . Methane emissions from deeper2parts of the Baltic ocean, he pointed out, did not reach the surface and thus the atmosphere, though.In the shallow areas, methane bubbles were coming up to the atmosphere, turning these importantecosystems from carbon sinks into carbon sources. Prof Humborg noted that these were new findingsthat had been measured during the heat wave of 2018 in very shallow coastal systems.As such, that could be summarised as eutrophication as the classic environmental issue in the Baltic Seabeing exacerbated now by climate change. Negative effects on biodiversity could be seen in particular incoastal areas that were vulnerable because they sheltered the most biodiversity. The deeper one probedinto the Baltic Sea, the less biodiversity there was. In the very deepest areas, he noted, there was practi-cally no oxygen left and thus no higher life at all. Therefore, it was necessary to focus on coastal areas. Hementioned the EU laws on biodiversity, underlining that biodiversity had to be protected from multiplepressures. Strong action was very much needed. According to EU law, 10 per cent of the area had to beprotected. Prof Humborg said that, as a matter of fact, 10 per cent of the sea had indeed been outlinedas marine protected areas. Unfortunately, the truth was that everything was permitted there. In a marineprotected area in the Baltic Sea, it was permitted to establish wind parks, to fish, to trawl and dredge. Ineffect, he stressed, they were not actually protected. Even though they were claimed to be protected, theywere not and could – almost – be used as any other place as well. So, action was needed on this front. ForProf Humborg, the primary goal though had to be to restore carbon-rich ecosystems to build resilience.Model simulations had showed that even if the Baltic Sea was warmed up, they had to be careful aboutthe other co-pressures such as eutrophication and contaminants. By reducing them – and good progresshad been made on that front -, healthy ecosystems could be brought back, even with a warmer climate.But that was difficult to achieve with a system that was already as stressed as the Baltic was right nowbecause it would only become even more susceptible.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 19Prof Humborg noted that he and his side were also responsible for the HELCOM process and theBaltic Sea Action Plan, with his group also providing advice on nutrient reduction. In that area, goodprogress was being made. This was a success story, he outlined. Nowhere else on Earth was seeing thesame massive reductions in nutrients emitted into coastal seas. In that regard, he said that they couldreally be proud of what they had achieved.Nonetheless, as he had mentioned earlier, this system had a long legacy as it took thirty years to seeimprovements. So, it was necessary to continue fighting eutrophication and trying to restore car-bon-rich ecosystems to build resilience. At the same time, they had to do a good job on opposingclimate change.Switching back to the global scale, Prof Humborg noted that these processes had to be quantifiedbetter. But a recent report from the World Resources Institute – focussing on the change from victimto solution – had said that with well-managed coastal seas, such as outlined in the EU Blue GrowthStrategy, there were five measures that could substantially contribute to fighting climate change. Threeof them included avoided CO emissions, and this was through offshore wind production, fossil-free2international shipping and by producing animal protein based on aquaculture and wild capture fish-eries. This would lead to much less CO emissions compared to livestock production on land. Aside2from these three CO avoidance measures, geoengineering was also being discussed. Seabed storage of2carbon – i.e., pumping CO into certain sea beds where they chemically reacted into carbonates and2could be stored for long times – was one measure, while another concerned returning key habitats– such as mangroves, salt marshes or seaweeds (e.g. bladder wracks, mussel banks in the Baltic Sea)– back to good condition. If these habitats were healthy, they would store carbon much like a forest.But if they were degraded, they could be a source of greenhouse gases.The authors of the World Resources Institute report summed up and quantified how much all thesemeasures would contribute. By managing the coastal seas the right way, this could lead to a reductionof 12 giga tonnes of CO equivalent. That was about 20 per cent of the way towards meeting the Paris2agreement’s goal of staying under a 1.5 – 2 °C rise in global temperatures. The full Paris agreementdemanded something like 56 billion tonnes of CO equivalent being reduced. According to the au-2thors’ claim, the Baltic Sea was a cornerstone and key player in this approach. Looking at coastal andmarine ecosystems, Prof Humborg explained that they did not do the entire job but represented asignificant player. In his view, it was necessary to look through all the sectors to fight climate change.He pointed out his message for this day, namely that healthy coastal and marine ecosystems could bean important player in the fight against climate change. But, he cautioned, coastal systems were treat-ed more like landfill sites even today, with many emissions from agriculture ending up in these areasand deteriorating these key habitats. With this degradation in place, they could not function anymoreas carbon sinks. If these were to be degraded further, rather than reducing eutrophication, there wasa risk that these deteriorated systems could even turn into a source of potent greenhouse gases suchas N O or methane. As such, he summarised his message as follows: A healthy ocean was critical to2achieving global targets to limit climate change.BSPC WG CCB Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked the professor for his presentation andhis very important message to the BSPC. She said that there was a lot that needed to be done. MsTenfjord-Toftby asked Prof Homburg if there was any one thing he could wish for the working group20 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportto include in its final report, what he would consider the most important aspect to start working on.The chairwoman went on to note that she was hearing what he had spoken about but would like theacademic to provide a prioritisation.Professor Christoph Humborg answered that there were two things: One would be a continued battleagainst eutrophication because this was still the key. Reducing the organic loads on the coastal areaswas crucial. The second item was to do something about marine protected areas. He noted that onecould go to the Baltic Sea Centre’s website and look at the policy briefs on this topic. Marine protect-ed areas, he explained, were often established in the vicinity of land protected areas. In his view, therewas no real thinking behind them, especially since, as he had noted earlier, everything was allowedthere. One was allowed to dredge, to trawl or to build wind parks. As such, these areas were not actu-ally protected. If land areas were treated like the marine areas, that would deeply upset many people.Unfortunately, what was happening at sea was essentially invisible to the ordinary citizen. Citizensdid not know the conditions of the sea, that it was treated like a trash site. Prof Homburg underlinedagain that marine protected areas was only a word, with no actual meaning. Therefore, making surethat these areas lived up to their name, that was a place where a lot of real progress could be made.Bodo Bahr appreciated the professor’s words, saying that this was the core question from the BSPC.He asked what it would mean from Prof Homburg’s point of view to reduce the loads in an efficientway. He wished to know what was necessary to achieve this as this battle had been waged for thirtyyears by now, without the sea or their efforts truly getting really better. How much would the loadshave to be reduced, he inquired, so one could say that the effects were moving in the right direction.Professor Christoph Humborg said that the proverbial elephant in the room was the common agricul-tural policy. The EU still wanted to have large-scale farms either focussing on livestock or crop pro-duction. This, the professor insisted, would never work. Where there was intensive livestock rearing,there would be eutrophication and degraded systems. It was everywhere in Europe, he said. Whereverpigs were raised in intensive farming – such as Normandy, in the Po area, in Denmark, in northernGermany -, this was not sustainable. This applied equally to the climate. This, the professor stressed,was a disaster. More had to be done. He offered his view that the normal people wanted a better agri-culture policy and made sure not to blame the farmers. But the policy had to be changed. More had tobe done, such as for example recycled agriculture and a combination of livestock and crop productionon the same farm. The current model might be better for the world market but by going on as at thepresent, there would not be any healthy coastal areas, he cautioned.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby noted that they very often heard that the Baltic Sea was in avery bad condition. If the worst-case scenario was to become reality and the ecosystem would die,she wondered if another ecosystem would eventually grow and take its place. She hurried to say thatthey did not want this to happen but with climate change, the temperatures were rising. The BalticSea’s wildlife was adapted to a current temperature. As she understood it, with rising temperatures,the current ecosystem would perish. Again, she wondered if another ecosystem would take its place.Professor Christoph Humborg said that of course, this would be the case. One scenario was that therewas also decreasing salinity and more precipitation in the northern part of the Baltic Sea. This wouldraise the freshwater content of the Baltic Sea even higher, making life even more difficult for thecurrent species living there. But this would constitute the likely change, rendering the Baltic Sea intoClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 21more of a lake ecosystem as could be found in northern Sweden or in Finland. It would have more ofa lake character, and indeed, some forms of life would find a home there, developing a new kind ofecosystem. Evolution would handle this change, he stated.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby replied that she wasn’t sure if she found this reassuring or trou-bling. They did have to work with what was available in the present day and they did not wish this pres-ent ecosystem to become extinct. She thanked the professor again for his presentation, adding that on 2December 2020, there was going to be a joint meeting of the BSPC with the PABSEC. She explainedthat the PABSEC was the parliamentary organisation concerning the Black Sea area. The BSPC wouldvery much like the professor to come and give a presentation at that joint meeting to the PABSEC on 2December, because the two organisations had in common that they were dealing with marine environ-ments, the Baltic and the Black Sea. As such, they also had in common the problem of pollution and nottreating their inner seas very well. The chairwoman invited Prof Homburg to that meeting.Professor Christoph Humborg answered that he would be trying his very best to make that happen,noting that he had done parts of his PhD in the Black Sea area. His PhD work had concerned boththe Danube and the Black Sea.Ms Susanné Wallner, Development strategist, Mariestad MunicipalityPresentation: ElectriVillage – a test and demonstration platformMariestadModel area of SustainabilityModel area of Sustainabilitydesignated by the UNESCOdesignated by the UNESCO22 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportMs Susanné Wallner thanked the BSPC for inviting her to this meeting. Introducing herself, she explainedthat she was working as a development strategist for a project in the Mariestad municipality, called Elec-triVillage. She showed a picture of her town, noting that it was a beautiful place in Sweden. This picturewas often used as an introduction because Mariestad was also a model area of sustainability, designated soby the UNESCO. It was situated by a lake, in a natural valley. They believed that their work on ElectriV-illage was connected through systemic thinking to the global goals. The project had been devised in 2015when the municipality had sat down with companies to try to reach a more sustainable situation in theindustry. Earlier, a lot of jobs had been lost when those had been moved abroad. It had been the goal tostop this degradation of employment and reach the global goals along the way. This had also been believedto offer business opportunities, connected to the circular economy. From there, ElectriVillage had takenoff. In the course of the project, it had become clear that this would also give rise to new professions. MsWallner said that the project was working with the local university platform, called DaCapo, to try toconnect education into their work. For example, at this point, they were conversing with the academicsabout the lack of engineers, telling them that an engineering education would have to deal with the circu-lar economy. That was, after all, where future jobs would be created. Another aspect was that ElectriVillagewas attracting tourists to see the project, in particular technological tourists. In the previous year, about ahundred groups had come in to take a look at what the project was putting into place.She presented a short promotional video about the project, proclaiming that ElectriVillage was turn-ing climate challenges into opportunities. The video stated it was not about individuals but aboutsomething much larger. Insisting that ElectriVillage was unique, it said that Mariestad was the onlymodel area in the world showing the combination of sustainable transport and energy systems. To-gether with businesses and researchers, they were developing smart solutions for their community. Asan example, they were building Sweden’s first solar- and hydrogen-powered preschools. ElectriVillagewas testing solutions for sustainable transport in an urban environment. Vehicles were powered byelectricity generated from the sun and water. The project featured the first solar-powered gas stationin the world. Roadbed inductive electric streets had also been tested and demonstrated in an urbanenvironment. These streets were charging vehicles driving on them. In addition, ElectriVillage wasinvesting in cutting-edge education in sustainable environmental technology. Mariestad was said tohave a holistic approach, determination and willpower. New industries, new business models, newprofessions were being created. The video ended by reiterating its claim to be turning climate chal-lenges into opportunities to develop sustainable social solutions.Ms Wallner next spoke about some of the sub-projects that were part of ElectriVillage. She further ex-plained the charging through electro-induction shown in the video, noting that this was like a railwayproviding electricity to moving and parked vehicles. For this, they were cooperating with DHL. Thepower was routed from a small DHL distribution hub throughout the region of Mariestad; from thathub, goods were distributed to customers. Another sub-project was called “Big Belly” which concernedtrash collection, with disposal containers run by solar panels. It was easier for refuse collectors to read offthe trash cans how much garbage had been gathered inside. If, for instance, a can was only filled to fiftyper cent of capacity, the collectors could wait a few more days before emptying it. That saved a lot oftransportation costs, Ms Wallner said. She believed that the pilot project in Stockholm had seen savingsof more than 100,000 journeys. This had been transferred to Mariestad. Ms Wallner underlined thatthey were happy to look at other region’s accomplishments and giving it a try in their own municipality.Moreover, there was a logistics hub in Mariestad where they collected everything coming into the regionin trucks along the motorways. From the hub, the goods were shipped out on electrical cargo vehicles.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 23A great challenge for them was the issue of charging electric vehicles. In the municipality and all-around Sweden, it was often unknown how to charge and how to pay because there were differentkinds of measurement systems and payment schemes in place. People, she noted, lacked interest tosome degree because the process of charging also took a long time. In big cities, there were long linesof cars waiting to get to the charging point.Ms Wallner explained that switching to batteries was another approach to solve the problem of suf-ficient electricity. Industry was facing such an issue when setting up new establishments but lack-ing the power for transporting workers to their jobs. Mariestad was specifically concerned with thequestion of scaling up battery usage to the macro level. At this point, batteries were already fraughtwith difficulties concerning global resources. Thus, this was associated with the global goals that wereconstantly on the mind of the ElectriVillage organisers. Rare earth metals were needed for batteries,but Ms Wallner said that nobody wanted to do this in their own backyards. Everyone wanted this tobe handled somewhere else so that the mining of rare earths was not associated with any social respon-sibility. Neither was it good for the environment. Considering the stock market, she stated that stocksof respective companies were rising by some 1,000 per cent. It was for that reason that Mariestad haddecided that they could not continue with the batteries but had to move to another solution. On thesmall scale – with iPhones and cars -, that was already a thorny issue. Going to the larger scale – suchas using batteries for heavy-duty or ordinary trucks, buses or trains – would create a much biggerproblem with the minerals that they could not afford. For that reason, hydrogen had been supportedas an alternative power source. In their view, there were many solutions available.Ms Wallner added that they did not wish to put anything aside as they were convinced all the dif-ferent kinds of approaches needed to be tried to achieve sustainable change. For example, they hadHVO100 in Mariestad, they had LNG, biogas and also hydrogen. Indeed, hydrogen was a primaryaspect, as evidenced by the first solar-powered hydrogen refuelling station in the world that hadbeen established in Mariestad. In the image she presented, the solar panels could be seen as well asthe containers where the system was housed along with the fuelling station. In the municipality,there were about 14 hydrogen cars at the moment. They were quite expensive, she noted, becausethere were few of their kind for now. This was handled in projects, allowing them to keep track ofwhat their employees were doing. The cars were used in the home care for elderly people, beingused both day and night. As such, they were covering a lot of miles. This system was very good, MsWallner said. At this point, wind power in Sweden was often turned off since there was no demandin a fully supplied power network, so that the companies could not earn money. With this system,though, storage was available with the generation of hydrogen through electrolysis of water fromthe local lake, with pure oxygen as a by-product. In her slide, it was mentioned that this oxygencould be put to use in hospitals, industry or the like. The stored energy could be put into the powernetwork when there was demand and money could be earned. Hydrogen could also be put into fuelcells for hydrogen-powered vehicles.She referred to a previous speaker talking about agriculture which sparked Ms Wallner to commentthat such a solar-hydrogen system could be useful for farmers. They could install solar panels on theirbarn, for instance, with a hydrogen-powered tractor that would only release water. The by-productoxygen could be employed on a land-based fish farm. That would form a whole circular economysystem which would deeply benefit the farmer economically.24 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportAs for the Mariestad refuelling station, she noted that during the colder weather in Sweden, the en-ergy from the hydrogen storage could be employed to refuel their cars. In her view, the change-overwould be easy because fuelling a vehicle with hydrogen only took four minutes and was thus effortlessfor people. This, she underlined, was an important factor in making such a switch palatable for theconsumer. She further pointed out that fuel cells running on hydrogen produced water but also heatalong with the electricity. Considering Europe as a whole, Ms Wallner said that there were about 800hydrogen refuelling stations. All the large car manufacturers would be offering hydrogen models fromthis year on. The various heavy-duty trucks or trains were also moving in that direction. In Germany,a train from Alstom had been tested with good results so that ten more had been ordered. In her view,Germany had the fastest growing network and economy, with about 60 stations and planning toinstall 400 over the next two years.Looking at their overall plan for ElectriVillage, she noted that they had their hydrogen car pool, newbusiness about to come in, education and researchers connected to the project as well as the technolo-gy tourism developing. A couple of weeks earlier, they had begun building their preschool for childrenwith the same system using solar panels and hydrogen storage. The next step would be to build upthe agriculture sector which they considered both exciting and very important. It would allow thefarmer to detach from the general power network, allowing them to continue producing food even ina crisis. Another project they were pursuing was dealing with hydrogen fuel cell usage, with the assis-tance of the EU Commission, to switch their local railway to hydrogen usage. Here, Mariestad wascooperating with a German company to scale up the project, allowing the municipality to connectto Gothenburg and convince the big city to switch to hydrogen along with the smaller ElectriVillage.Mariestad was trying to show each municipality that they could both refuel trains as well as trucks.She added that they had been very pleased in the summer when the EU had announced that theywould invest 430 billion euros to make Europe the forerunner in hydrogen usage. Ms Wallner ap-proved of this, saying that this would allow them to shift different areas to sustainable power sources,both in Sweden and other places in Europe.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked Ms Wallner for her presentation. She noted that Ma-riestad was quite a small municipality, and the project must have cost a lot of investments. The chair-woman wondered how the process had gone from idea to implementation and who had made thedecision to take on this project.Ms Susanné Wallner answered that they had a very brave mayor in Johan Abrahamsson. She men-tioned that she had been in politics before becoming a municipality employee, and therefore, sheknew how hard it was to make such a brave decision. This decision had been taken in only two weeksbecause he had seen an opportunity to buy a station that had been left over from another project. So,there had been something in place to build on from five or ten years earlier. In her view, courage wasnecessary for this step as well as being in the right place and time. These days, though, she believedthat this could be handled in projects.She added regarding the costs of ElectriVillage that these had run to 20 million Swedish crowns.There had been help with funding from the regional administration, about 8 million Swedish crowns.As such, it had not been that expensive an investment for what they had put into place. After all, theyhad given a small city the opportunity to show off a new system and to be pioneers on the frontline.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 25Ms Wallner wished to say to the BSPC that it was necessary not only to look at the hydrogen butat the entire system. Today, it was possible to sell both hydrogen and oxygen. Considering the cir-cular economy, it was highly important in her view to look at the entire system rather than only thelow-hanging fruit. It should be considered at a large scale for all the community.Mr Michael Tjernström, PhD Professor, MeteorologyPresentation: What does global climate change mean for the Baltic, and is there anything that can bedone?Global warming and the Baltic:Is there anything that can be done?Michael TjernströmDepartment of Meteorology & Bolin Centre for Climate Research,Stockholm universityProf Michael Tjernström explained that he would be talking about global warming and the Baltic Sea.His background was in meteorology, and his research mainly dealt with the Arctic. As such, he wasno expert on the Baltic per se, but climate change had been flagged as a global issue so that it shouldbe seen from a worldwide point of view.Looking at media and their coverage of climate issues these days, they primarily presented extremeevents – newsworthy occurrences, in other words. Some dealt with conflicts and being provocative.From the point of view of science, the picture was far more boring. To illustrate, he showed a graph de-tailing global warming, with each dot representing the global average temperature for one year. All hadbeen scaled towards the period from 1960 to 1990 as the baseline. What could be seen from the graphwas that temperatures had risen by about one degree centigrade from about 1910 to the present day asa global average. The graph equally showed quite large variations from this overall curve for individualyears. The preceding year, 2019, had happened to lie precisely on the line calculated for the long-termaverage. That was an inherent factor due to the climate being chaotic and therefore very variable.26 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportMr Tjernström went on to concede that one degree of change did not sound like a whole lot. But bylooking back in time, things were becoming a little bit more uncertain. Considering a thousand yearsago or ten thousand years ago, it became clear that the current change was indeed quite extraordinary.Nothing of the sort had been happening in the past ten thousand years. A prolonged time series withhigher temperatures could only be found millions of years ago. A few of the time periods – namely theinterglacial periods – probably had similar temperatures as today, although only for briefer lengths oftime. Even though global climate was a worldwide issue, global warming was not equal everywhere.In general, the warming was higher, the further north or south one went. This applied in particularto the north since the Arctic was the most intensely warming region. That was also true for the Balticregion. The professor showed a time series for Sweden, noting that this was because it had been easierto acquire and most likely was representative for the whole of the Baltic Sea region. In a similar timeperiod as the global scale, starting a little bit earlier, double the warming could be found. Unlike theworldwide rise of about one per cent, the Baltic Sea region had warmed by about 2 per cent. Therehad even been a warming of 1.5 degrees since the mid-1960s or 1970s. As such, Prof Tjernström saidthat the warming was more intense in the Baltic Sea and for the countries around its shores.He moved on to talk about the Arctic, which happened to be his area of research. He explained thatglobal warming was producing effects there as well. In this case, he was showing a graph of the minimumsea ice extent in the Arctic, as it had been observed by satellites since 1979. The graph described a slowlydeclining state. Of the 13 lowest years, all of them happened to be in the 13 last years. No year before2007 had ever had this little ice in the Arctic as all the years since. Prof Tjernström mentioned that therewas ice in the Baltic Sea as well. While there was no point to looking at the lowest extent of the ice –since that would be zero -, the maximum annual sea ice extent was a valid comparison. Here, a slightlydifferent picture took shape: The decline was much slower than in the Arctic but such a decline couldclearly be seen. The main factor was the consecutive years when there had been a lot of sea ice, comparedwith a baseline of very little sea ice. The Baltic in terms of sea ice was a great deal more variable than theArctic. Nonetheless, the professor pointed out that the ice was vanishing from the Baltic Sea as well. Ex-panding the scope again, he looked at two major players in the climate system that would have an effecton the Baltic Sea region as well as globally: Greenland and the Antarctic. For some years now, sciencehad been able to measure the mass changes of the large inland ice regions, measured in gigatonnes. TheGreenland ice mass change had lost over the last decade or so three hundred gigatonnes of water everyyear. He noted that it was not possible to measure the exact volume of the ice but how much had gone.Three hundred gigatonnes, he explained, corresponded to slightly less than half a metre, covering theentire surface area of Sweden. That, he underlined, was rather a lot of mass. Up until 2007 or 2008, ithad been thought that the Antarctic ice mass had been reasonably stable, but observations were showinga similar change in the Antarctic land ice mass as in Greenland, even though it was smaller.Of course, all this water ended up in the oceans, leading to sea level rise. Personally, Prof Tjernströmthought that sea level rise was the most dangerous consequence of global warming, even though itwas not talked about that much. Today, the global sea levels were increasing by 3.3 millimetres peryear. Although this didn’t sound like much, there were two factors involved: First of all, if one multi-plied by ten or a hundred years, one arrived at a substantial change. Second, this came on top of theextremes. Extreme conditions would reveal this first, for instance with a powerful autumn storm witha high sea level when you had to add decimetres on top of that. Looking at the Baltic Sea, the rise ofits level was following the global change rather well. In the respective graph, all the measuring stationsthat had a considerable land rise since the last ice age had been compensated for, so that these valuesClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 27represented the sea level rise if there were no rebound of the land that had once been depressed bymassive ice sheets. As such, the sea level rise was comparable to the global increase, with about 2.5 to3 millimetres per year.Scientists were trying to measure all of these values, but to really understand what would be happen-ing in the future, climate models were required. Prof Tjernström noted that he did not have to explainwhat a climate model was and what it did in detail. He provided a rough description as a mathemati-cal imperfect tool that scientists were using to understand how the climate was changing. This allowedresearchers to explore future climates. The two examples he used in his presentation representedindividual climate model runs which showed an orange expanse of various data points for each year.From that, a thin red line had been calculated as the average of the models. Each orange strip was arealization of a potential climate that could have happened, with the red line representing the averageof many such potentials. On top of that, a black line was shown that stood for the observed climate.Prof Tjernström pointed out that reality had only one climate, and they could not know which ofthe model data matched the real climate. It was possible, he conceded, that none of them did. Butcomparing the average of the model runs with the real data showed that the climate models were ableto capture the variability that the observations showed. The black line was always within the range ofthe orange data points. In the graph he presented, all the known factors had been used to calculateclimate change. This included all volcanic eruptions, the increase in greenhouse gases and other as-pects affecting the climate. This allowed researchers to model the evolution that had been observed.The speaker went on to mention that one could experiment with the input factors. In the secondgraph, every factor affecting the climate had been included, except for the increase in greenhouse gas-es. Thus, they derived the climate that there would have been on Earth if the greenhouse gases hadn’tincreased in the atmosphere. As such, the graph showed that around 1960 or 1970, the climate wouldslowly have begun cooling down a little bit whereas in reality, it had not. From the mid-1960s, therehad been a significant climate warming that was due entirely to human activities. There was no sci-entific explanation for the observed global warming that did not consider the increase of greenhousegas concentrations. Prof Tjernström was quick to mention that this did not mean that science kneweverything or that the models were perfect. Nevertheless, there was no other way of explaining theincrease than the greenhouse gases.Prof Tjernström went on to say that the future was not looking good. If nothing was done about thisproblem, they were looking at a rise of global temperatures of about three to six per cent at the end ofthe century. The sea ice in the Arctic would have gone, somewhere around 2050 or earlier. That wouldcorrespond to a rise of sea levels by about one metre. One metre, he underlined, was a lot of a sea levelrise. For the Baltic Sea, the professor mentioned a few examples of the effects. He began with wintertemperatures. The temperature increase would grow larger the further north one went. He said therewould be a rise by six degrees and more in the northern part of the Baltic Sea region, with maybe threeto four in the southern part. The increase would be greatest in winter, although there would be a fairrise in the summer as well. Regarding precipitation, he presented a graphic about the summer rainfall,even though the changes during the winter would be greater. He had made this choice because therewere regions in the southern area which would see almost no increase. Since evaporation would alsogrow stronger, that meant that this could pose a serious risk for water shortage in the southern area.Evaporation along with loss or unchanged precipitation led to a lack of water. In the winter months,they were talking about an increase of 10 to 15 per cent in precipitation, which he described as quite28 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportan increase. Together with the temperature increases, that meant a lot less snow. Essentially, from themiddle part of Sweden and southern Finland and southward, snow would become a rare event. Therewould not be much snow at the end of this century. The professor also showed a graphic of the pro-jected sea level rise until the end of the century. In this graphic, they were also including the land risedue to the previous ice age. North of Åland, there was a zero line, i.e., that there would still be moreland than sea level rise. In the southern Baltic, Prof Tjernström said that there would be half a metreof sea rise which would have serious consequences for coastal regions and coastal erosion.In summary, scientists were expecting increased temperatures, especially in winter and in the north,of up to six or seven degrees centigrade. They also foresaw increased precipitation, also particularly inwinter and in the north at 10 to 20 per cent, but there might also be possible water shortages in thesouth in the summer. The increase in precipitation and in temperature of course would lead to lesssnow and more rain, even in winter, leading to rain and snow problems. The latter would include theincreased run-off creating a new seasonality where the spring melt season would not be so predomi-nant, and the risk of flooding would rise in the winter months. The diminishment of the sea ice wouldprobably take until the end of this century before being completely without ice, but there would begreat inter-annual variability. Sometime around 2070 or 2080, there would be periods of years withno ice intersected by single or few years with ice. Rising sea levels were, in his view, the main problem.That was because, even if they managed to stabilise the temperature globally at two degrees – as perthe target in the Paris Agreement -, these glaciers would continue melting for another two hundredyears. The glaciers were slow and had already begun melting. Even if the climate could be stabilisedwithin the next 50 years or so, they would keep on melting until they were in balance with the cli-mate. That would mean a lot of sea level rise even after stabilisation.Prof Tjernström went on to speak about what could be done in this regard. Unfortunately, there wasno Baltic-only solution. Nothing could be done to save the Baltic Sea by the nations around its shoresalone. What was possible, was attacking the global climate problem. In that respect, he referred to theParis Accord. Humanity had probably lost the opportunity to reach the 1.5 °C threshold but keepingglobal warming below 2 °C was still possible. Key to the Paris Accord was the nations voluntarilycommitting to cut emissions as best they could, using different ways. Previously, the professor noted,hard targets had been set for countries which they had had to fulfil. Now, each nation could do whatthey were best at. He mentioned that he could speak with some more knowledge about Sweden’s part.The country was facing numerous problems, one of them industry and the other transportation. Thelatter he described as low-hanging fruit. Much could be done about transportation emissions veryquickly. But as long as global warming was going on, the Baltic Sea would continue to suffer, nomatter what the neighbouring countries were doing, unless the global problem was being dealt with.He apologised that he could not give any more positive news as he brought his presentation to a close.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked Prof Tjernström and opened the floor for questions.From Åland, Liz Mattsson thanked Prof Tjernström for his presentation as well, noting that it wasreally interesting. There were a lot of challenges to work on.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 29Bodo Bahr added his thanks. He noted that the professor had shown what the situation would belike at the end of the century. In political discussions, participants often claimed that they were notconcerned with what would happen 80 or 90 years in the future. As such, he asked what could be saidmore precisely about e.g., 20 years from now.Prof Michael Tjernström answered that the changes could essentially be scaled from the 100-yeartimescale to the 20-year range. Progressing gradually, within 10 or 20 years, the interannual variabilitywould still be so great that one could not be sure that what was being witnessed was actually climatechange. But he added something that he had not mentioned earlier, namely that this progress wasirreversible. He stressed that the situation would not be going back to a normal climate after havingstabilised it. The changes that people had experienced would be staying with them for hundreds andhundreds of years. The professor explained that this was a train heading one way only. There was nogoing back.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby asked for clarification that they could not actually change thedevelopment but would have to try to find a way to cope with it.Prof Michael Tjernström confirmed this. Nevertheless, he also underlined that it was never too lateto start.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby agreed with that, highlighting that they were indeed starting.She thanked the guests once more for their presentations.30 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report4.2 The BSPC Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity gathered for anotherdigital meeting focussed on expert presentations on 15 March 2021. Representatives fromHELCOM spoke about the organisation’s own efforts and measures to restore a good ecologicalstatus to the Baltic Sea. As best practice examples, experts reported on several projects takingpractical measures to improve the ecological status of marine waters. The meeting involvedmore then 50 participants from the Åland Islands, the Baltic Assembly, Denmark, Estonia,Finland, the German Bundestag, Hamburg, Iceland, Kaliningrad, Latvia, Lithuania,Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Nordic Council, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation,Schleswig-Holstein and Sweden.WG Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby opened the meeting by noting that the digital format of-fered the opportunity to attract experts who might not be available otherwise. This would be evi-denced by this meeting’s rich wealth of information provided.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 31Expert presentationsMr Rüdiger Strempel, HELCOM Executive SecretaryPresentation: HELCOM and BSAPHELCOM & Baltic Sea Action Planin briefBy RüdigerStrempelExecutive Secretary of HELCOMWWoorrkkiinngg GGrroouupp CCCCBB ––BSPC15 March 2021HELCOM Executive Secretary Rüdiger Strempel thanked the BSPC for inviting the HELCOM rep-resentatives to the Working Group meeting. He thought it was interesting how procedures and peoplewere adapting to new situations. It used to be that one said, “The floor is yours” but now in the digitalformat, it was, “The screen is yours.”He said that he would provide some general information about HELCOM while Ms Haldin wouldexplain some details about climate change and the actions taken by HELCOM with regard to thatissue.As for his own presentation, he noted that all his listeners were experts on Baltic Sea issues, by beingpart of the BSPC. Nonetheless, he wished to note some of the reasons why HELCOM existed. TheBaltic Sea was a unique but fragile ecosystem. He presented a map which showed that the Baltic Seawas a semi-enclosed sea, almost a lake. That led to some very specific ecologic conditions, such as lowsalinity, brackish water, a multitude of organisms that had adapted specifically to these circumstancesand were therefore also quite vulnerable to the latter changing. The sea was relatively small, but thecatchment area was very large, covering 4 times the sea itself. The population in that catchment areareached 85 million people. As a matter of fact, the region was quite dynamic and busy, Mr Strempelunderlined. The waterway was busy as well, as it was one of the most navigated in the world. Therewere up to 2,000 larger vessels sailing on the Baltic Sea at any given time. This might not be the caseat the moment, he cautioned, but it had been during the times before the corona virus. The pandemicmight have led to some reduction at the moment, although the figures related to pre-COVID times.32 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportGiven these facts, there was a multitude of pressures bearing down on the Baltic Sea which had to beaddressed.Unfortunately, one had to say that the Baltic Sea was not in a good environmental status, i.e., thelong-term goal of HELCOM. The environmental goals set by HELCOM were unlikely to be met by2021. That was the current year, after all. The Baltic Sea Action Plan had envisioned achieving a goodenvironmental status by this year 2021 which clearly had not been achieved. Therefore, more had tobe done. There was one major issue that was the single most important affecting the Baltic Sea, name-ly eutrophication. Despite considerable improvements and clear trends of nutrient reduction since the1980s, they still had to face the fact that 97 per cent of the Baltic Sea was affected by eutrophication.Total losses of 3.8 – 4.4 billion euros were incurred annually due to this in the Baltic Sea region. Allof them had seen the blue algae in the summertime. If one flew over the Baltic Sea in summer, thealgal blooms were quite impressive, although one could see them from shore as well. That was one ofthe effects of eutrophication. There were indeed large areas in the Baltic Sea which were hypoxic oranoxic – i.e., there was too little or no oxygen at all. This was a problem that still had to be contendedwith, even though the governments in HELCOM had been cooperating for decades. In addition tothis primary issue, there were emerging and previously unaddressed challenges, such as marine litter,plastic pollution and ghost nets; persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that were referred to by somepeople as “forever chemicals” because they never seemed to disappear; pharmaceuticals; underwaternoise; seabed disturbance; and of course climate change.The question was why they had not reached a good environmental status after all these years anddecades and after having had a Baltic Sea Action Plan in place since 2007. There was a number ofreasons for this, Mr Strempel explained, among them the ecosystem lag. This meant that things didnot change overnight. For the Baltic Sea, one also had to be aware that it had a low level of waterexchange with the neighbouring North Sea. It took on average thirty years for the waters to be com-pletely exchanged between the Baltic and the North Sea. Mr Strempel conceded that his followingmetaphor was not scientifically correct but illustrative: If he dropped a cork into the Baltic Sea, sayinto the harbour in Helsinki, it would still be in the Baltic Sea until the early 2050s. That provided anidea of the dimensions of the problem caused by the ecosystem lag. In addition, there were new chal-lenges emerging, some of which he had listed a bit earlier. He went on to point out that some of themeasures envisioned by HELCOM had not yet been implemented. Moreover, some of the measuresthat had been implemented had turned out not to be sufficient.Mr Strempel next spoke about the history of HELCOM in a brief overview. HELCOM was actuallyquite an old organisation as it had been founded in 1974, based on an instrument of internationallaw, i.e., the Helsinki Convention which had been signed by the then seven contracting parties. Hebelieved this to be remarkable and stressed this event for two reasons: On the one hand, this hadhappened in the middle of the Cold War, seeing countries from the west and the east of Europe reachacross the ideological divide because they had realised that the Baltic Sea needed help and action hadto be taken to improve its ecological status. The second reason was that 1974 was an early date interms of international environmental policy. He pointed out that the first United Nations conferenceon human impact on the environment had only taken place in 1972. Looking at the various envi-ronmental conventions that were taken for granted in the modern day or, for that matter, Europeanenvironmental law, he noted that none of that had existed in 1974. This was an early time for envi-ronmental concerns. Clearly, the countries of the Baltic Sea had been very farsighted in pursuing thisClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 33course. In 1980, the HELCOM Secretariat had been established. Following the geopolitical changesin the late 1980s and early 1990s, HELCOM had had to rethink some aspects. The convention thatHELCOM was based on, the Helsinki Convention, had been adapted to the new situation. Previous-ly, there had been seven contracting partners, he stated. Due to the changes at the time, there werenow ten partners. The revised Convention had been adopted in 1992, entering into force in 2000.With ten contracting parties having signed on to the convention, that meant that all Baltic Sea coun-tries and the European Union were part of HELCOM.Mr Strempel next spoke about the structure of HELCOM. It might seem a bit confusing at first glance,he admitted. It was necessary to keep in mind that the instrument of international law, the legallybinding Helsinki Convention, was underpinning HELCOM. This convention as such was only a pieceof paper and had to be brought to life. For that, convention bodies were needed which had differentfunctions. Some took decisions, some informed those decisions, and some helped to implement it. Thehighest decision-making body of the Helsinki Convention was HELCOM which existed in three guises,the highest of which was the Ministerial Meeting which took place every three years, with the most re-cent one in 2018 in Brussels. The next meeting would be in October 2021 and was currently scheduledto take place in Lübeck in Germany. Hopefully, the corona pandemic would allow them to hold thatevent in person. Every three years, accordingly, the overall course of HELCOM was being charted. MrStrempel noted that this had a high level of abstraction. The process had to be kept moving in-between,though. To enable that, the Helsinki Commission itself was meeting once every year. In fact, that wouldhappen later in the present week. To continually advance and progress their work, there was the levelof Heads of Delegations which met twice a year – once in summer, usually in June, and once in winter,commonly in December. The next meeting, therefore, was scheduled for the beginning of June of 2021,with another Heads of Delegations meeting in December. These were decision-making bodies. Thedecisions taken by HELCOM were referred to as recommendations. Mr Strempel underlined that thesewere aptly named as they – unlike the Helsinki Convention at the heart – were not legally binding. Theywere examples of so-called soft law. Politically and morally, they were indeed binding but not in a legalsense. They could thus not be enforced by legal mechanisms.These recommendations and the overall work of HELCOM were science-based, as he underlined.That was one of the hallmarks and the outstanding characteristics of HELCOM. In the decision-mak-ing bodies, there were decision makers and policy people. They did not necessarily feature scientistsand experts. For that reason, there were two other levels: One of these was the HELCOM workinggroups, consisting of representatives like the heads of delegations of all contracting partners but ata more technical level. These groups formed an interface between the decision-making level and theexpert groups and networks which were even more scientific. Thus, the science was being fed into thedecisions of HELCOM. Consequently, the decisions by HELCOM were based on the best availableand most recent science.To keep all of it going, the HELCOM Secretariat coordinated the work, prepared and serviced themeetings, followed up on them and undertook a number of other tasks to keep the process in motion.They also took care of outreach programmes and served as liaisons between the contracting parties. Inother words, the HELCOM secretariat did what any normal convention secretariat did, Mr Strempelsaid. Decision-making in HELCOM, he reiterated, was based on a bottom-up science-based ap-proach. A mandate – or an impulse – to look into a specific issue was usually given by the contractingparties, based on findings from the various HELCOM bodies that he had sketched out earlier, e.g.,34 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportthe working or expert groups. The latter, constituted of national experts, provided the scientific ortechnological backgrounds while the working groups, equally consisting of national experts, trans-lated these findings into draft recommendations, strategies or actions. The heads of delegations thenformally approved the labour of the working groups. If a decision had to be taken at a higher level,such as the annual meeting of the Helsinki Commission or the Ministerial Meeting every three years,it would be forwarded to either of those institutions.Mr Strempel presented the HELCOM organigram, featuring the Helsinki Commission at the top, inits various guises. Below that were the heads of delegation. The HELCOM main groups – of whichthere were eight – were listed below. Five of these were permanent while three others were temporary.He did not go into details on either of those but mentioned that their acronyms were not necessarilyself-explanatory. The “GEAR” group for instance was a management group, even though one mighthave thought it related to fisheries. Indeed, it was the group working on implementing the ecosystemapproach which, after all, was at the core of what HELCOM was doing. Below those groups, therewere the expert groups and the network at the bottom of the organigram.Regarding how things were done at HELCOM, Mr Strempel referred once more to the HelsinkiConvention as an instrument of international law, containing the objectives and obligations as well asannexes featuring technical guidelines and regulations. This was their bible, he said metaphorically. Itwas the basis of all of their work. At regular intervals, the Helsinki Commission would adopt recom-mendations on measures to address areas of concern which could then be implemented through na-tional legislation. All in all, some 260 recommendations had been adopted over the years since 1974.Moreover, HELCOM had action plans and projects which contained actions and measures, such asthe Baltic Sea Action Plan or regional action plans on specific issues, e.g., marine litter. A very fun-damental part of their work was monitoring and assessment. HELCOM was developing indicatorsregarding pressures on the state of the environment, thematic assessments as well as so-called holisticassessments, also called HOLAS. The next of the latter was due in 2023, Mr Strempel explained,adding that they were already preparing that report. In addition, there were the Ministerial Meetingswhich set the major strategic directions.The speaker went on to talk in more detail about the Baltic Sea Action Plan. HELCOM had adopteda Baltic Sea Action Plan in 2007; the plan’s aim was to achieve a good environmental status of theBaltic marine environment by 2021. As he had said at the start of his presentation, there was no doubtthat such a good status would not be reached in the present year. Therefore, it had become necessaryto rethink a few things. Mr Strempel sketched out the background of the plan, such as the goals thathad been set from the start. These were a Baltic Sea unaffected by eutrophication – which they hadfailed at -, a Baltic Sea undisturbed by hazardous substances, a favourable status of Baltic Sea biodi-versity and environmentally friendly maritime activities. The Baltic Sea Action Plan, he clarified, wasHELCOM’s action for a healthier Baltic Sea. These were, as mentioned before, science-based actions– in other words, they were based on a long-term vision underpinned by solid science. In addition,they were also based on and dependent on cross-sectoral and cross-regional acceptance. The BSAP waswidely accepted across the Baltic Sea region. He underlined the high importance of this ownership.Without it, they would not be able to implement the plan.Next, Mr Strempel spoke about the issue of nutrients and hazardous substances. Reduction of in-puts due to BSAP actions had taken place, he noted, but it had not been sufficient. Regarding theClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 35protection of biodiversity, improvements could be linked to the BSAP. As an example of improvedbiodiversity, he mentioned seals. In other areas, though, there was no sufficient improvement. Cleanerand safer shipping was another goal that he addressed here, stating that they had achieved a reductionof spills and cleaner shipping practices. Nevertheless, they had not yet arrived at their overall target.That being the case, the contracting parties had decided that the BSAP had to be updated. Since ithad had a target year of 2021, i.e., the current year, it had become clear that a follow-up of somesort would be needed. It had been the Ministerial Meeting in Brussels in 2018 that had provided thestrong political mandate for this process. Said process, Mr Strempel highlighted, was an evolutionrather than a revolution. Based on the current plan, it had at least the same ambition level, and itwould refer to the existing commitments. However, these had to be further developed and progressed.Rather than re-inventing the wheel, they were using what was useful and what had worked. At thesame time, they were rethinking and tweaking what had not. They might drop some things and re-place them with others. One of the bases of this work was the ecosystem approach, considering theeconomic and social benefits of a healthy sea. Mr Strempel mentioned that the annual HELCOMstakeholder conference had been held the week before which had been dedicated to ecosystem-basedmanagement. That further underlined that this approach was a central facet of what they were doing.He clarified that they were not managing the ecosystem itself but rather the human activities. As theMinisterial Meeting of 2018 had put it, they were putting forward actions necessary for managinghuman activities to meet the HELCOM goals.At this point, they were adapting the plan to the current HELCOM topics. He referred back to thereasons why they had not progressed as well as they had originally envisioned. One of these was thatthey were facing new challenges. The new Baltic Sea Action Plan, even though based on the previ-ous one, would take account of emerging challenges that had not been sufficiently addressed in thepreceding BSAP, such as marine litter, underwater noise, seabed loss, biodiversity concentration andclimate change. Mr Strempel highlighted another highly important aspect mandated and constantlyreiterated by the ministers, namely that they had to engage with global targets and commitments.The Baltic Sea Action Plan was not an end in itself but had to be interlinked with global targets andcommitments, such as the SDGs, the Aichi targets and their successors, the EU MSFD and so on.Mr Strempel next spoke about how the upcoming Baltic Sea Action Plan would be structured andits goals. The vision behind the BSAP was a healthy Baltic Sea environment with diverse biologicalcomponents functioning in balance, resulting in a good ecological status and supporting a wide rangeof sustainable economic and social activities. The key phrase here, he underlined, was ecosystem-basedmanagement. That was the organisation’s vision. To achieve it, a number of goals had been set. Theprimary goal was a healthy and resilient Baltic Sea ecosystem. It was accompanied by three others,namely a Baltic Sea unaffected by hazardous substances and litter, environmentally sustainable sea-based activities and a Baltic Sea unaffected by eutrophication. From this structure, it could be seenthat the latter three goals were feeding into the primary goal of a Baltic Sea ecosystem that was healthyand resilient. By achieving the lower three goals, that would automatically contribute to reaching theprimary goal. In addition to these very sector-specific goals – hazardous substances, litter, sea-basedactivities and eutrophication -, the new Baltic Sea Action Plan would contain a so-called horizontalaction segment which would cover issues that were cross-cutting, such as climate change, the issueof monitoring and assessment, maritime spatial planning, economic and social analyses as well asfinancing.36 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportMoreover, the BSAP was HELCOM’s central instrument for achieving a good environmental statusof the Baltic Sea. It was not the only tool, though. The organisation was addressing the various issuesand challenges facing the Baltic Sea in other ways as well. Regarding nutrient recycling and internalnutrient reserves, HELCOM was pursuing a nutrient recycling strategy. For marine litter, they hadcommitted to achieving a significant reduction by 2025, through the regional action plan on marinelitter. The issue of land-sea interaction concerned the very large catchment area of the Baltic Sea thatMr Strempel had mentioned at the beginning of his presentation, with a lot of rivers flowing into thesea. To resolve the inherent challenges, the organisation was working together with river managementauthorities, implementing a joint workshop a couple of months earlier. It had been the first of its kindand been quite successful, as the speaker noted. Underwater noise had a clear effect on marine lifeand therefore impacted biodiversity. To address this, a regional action plan on underwater noise hadbeen put into effect. Climate change would be dealt with more extensively in Ms Haldin’s subsequentpresentation. It was necessary to understand its effects in order to inform foreign policy. What wasclear, however, was that the Baltic Sea was affected by climate change. In fact, it was warming morequickly than other marine areas. Therefore, this issue would have to be addressed. Prior to Ms Haldin’sinformation, Mr Strempel wished to highlight the climate change fact sheet.Going back to the remaining instruments for emerging issues, he spoke about maritime spatialplanning which could contribute to a healthy and resilient ecosystem. They were applying ecosys-tem-based management in the context of maritime spatial planning as well, for instance includingthe regional MPS roadmap. In addition, they were working on a HELCOM Science Agenda whichwould identify future science needs for a the Baltic Sea. Mr Strempel noted that they were blessed tobe living in an area with a very vibrant scientific community. The agenda was due to be adopted atthe Ministerial Meeting in Lübeck in October of the present year. That would help the organisationlearn which science needs there were and how to address them. Finally, he mentioned HOLAS III,the holistic assessment he had referred to before. The assessment would cover the period from 2016 –2021. The Pollution Load Compilation 8 (PLC-8, 1995 – 2021) would also include an assessment ofthe pollution loads into the Baltic Sea. These were some of the instruments at hand for HELCOM,and Mr Strempel underlined that a great deal of work was left to do because the Baltic Sea ActionPlan was still being elaborated. He noted that they were on the home stretch of finalising it – whichoften was the most strenuous phase. Once the BSAP was adopted at the Ministerial Meeting in thefall, HELCOM would launch into the third holistic assessment (HOLAS III). As such, there was alot of work on the agenda for the organisation.He moved on to speak about what the Baltic Sea Action Plan had done or to what degree it had beenput into practice. 71 per cent of joint actions as foreseen under the current BSAP had been imple-mented. These were created jointly through HELCOM and its working groups, including the jointmanagement guidelines or assessments of the environmental status. In addition to these joint actionsforeseen by the plan, there were also national actions that had to be implemented by the countries.These actions required steps to be taken at the national level, for instance the designation of marineprotected areas, the development of a national management plan, enactment of agreed measures, leg-islation and so on. Of these national actions, he regretted that only 29 per cent had been implementedso far. He reiterated that the current BSAP dated back to 2007. But in the present year of 2021, onlyabout 30 per cent of national actions had been implemented and still only about three quarters ofthe joint actions. This showed that a lot had been done on the one hand, but a lot of work still hadto be tackled.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 37Concerning the question of where and how parliamentarians could be of assistance, Mr Strempelsaid that this was an area to bear in mind. Parliamentarians could influence the political processes intheir respective countries – on the one hand in dealing with the executive, the government, and thusworking towards the implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan. On the other hand, they were alsohighly important and key interfaces with the broader public – their respective constituents as electedmembers of parliament: Only if the public at large could identify with these goals and assume owner-ship of the BSAP and its goals, there was a viable chance of its implementation by 2030. He pointedout that 2030 was the new target date. In a nutshell, this was where parliamentarians were playing akey and vital role in securing the success of the Baltic Sea Action Plan and achieving the goal of a goodenvironmental status for the Baltic Sea.Ms Jannica Haldin, HELCOM Professional Secretary in charge of biodiversity and climate changePresentation: Climate Change and BiodiversityClimate Change and the Baltic SeaBy JannicaHaldin, HELCOMTuesday, July 27, 2021HELCOM Professional Secretary in Charge of Biodiversity and Climate Change Jannica Haldinexplained that she worked with issues related with biodiversity and conservation as well as the mon-itoring of the ecosystem in general. Other parts of her work were assessments of the ecosystem andthe implementation of the ecosystem approach along with climate change. For this presentation, shenoted she would focus on the biodiversity and climate change aspects. Climate change would be theoverarching topic, referencing the climate change-related effects on biodiversity.She began by talking about the interface between HELCOM and climate change, specifically theorganisation’s role regarding climate change. Within HELCOM, the countries had agreed that theultimate aim of their work should be to increase the resilience of the ecosystem against impactsstemming from climate change. The next step was to identify how to do that. It had been agreed38 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportthat HELCOM should expand its current function as a regional platform for policy, science and di-alogue to incorporate climate change more specifically. In order to achieve this and make their workvaluable for policy purposes, it was necessary to develop a long-term, multidisciplinary approach tounderstanding and communicating to decision-makers and the broader public what the implicationsof climate change were for the marine and coastal environment. Nobody could make sound decisionswithout the proper information base.To set up this long-term, multidisciplinary approach, HELCOM had launched a long-term expertnetwork on climate change. That allowed the gap between policy and science to be shortened alongwith the time to get quality science to the decision-makers. That improved decisions on how to man-age the activities and cause as little harm to the ecosystem as possible. The climate change networkwas called EN CLIME and was a joint effort together with Baltic Earth. Some of the attending par-liamentarians, Ms Haldin said, might be familiar with that organisation as well as with HELCOM.She explained that Baltic Earth represented a long-standing established focal point for technical ma-rine climate change information and expertise. It went beyond climate change to look at drivers ina broader spectrum as well. EN CLIME was a network of scientists that had focused on the BalticSea, trying to identify the driving forces changing the state in the sea. This expert pool had alreadybeen available for the Baltic Sea region, and she pointed out that there was no point to duplicatingefforts. As such, HELCOM had approached Baltic Earth. The latter approved of the former’s sug-gestion, leading to the formation of the network, with Baltic Earth providing the scientific basis andHELCOM the strengthened links to policy and decision-makers. At the moment, this network con-sisted of more than 110 experts, ranging from very specific scientific topics all the way to a broaderunderstanding of the implications of climate change for policy. There were representatives from all theBaltic Sea states in the network. It functioned as a coordinating framework and a platform to harnessand share the expertise, both within the network – boosting the scientific work – but also to outsidetargets through HELCOM and Baltic Earth, feeding into the general public. One of the first stepsthey were pursuing was reducing the lag time in transferring quality-assured science to the policy levelas well as the general public. At the same time, they sought to make sure that the science was easilyavailable, not just in time but also the way in which it was presented by getting to the core of thequestions. Furthermore, the network supported a close dialogue between policymakers and scientists.In that, it functioned as a platform for such discussions.Ms Haldin next spoke about this basis provided by the science, namely the HELCOM ClimateChange Fact Sheet (CCFS). Despite its name, the CCFS was more of a report, looking at 34 parame-ters. These had been identified based on ecological and policy/management relevance. They dealt withboth so-called primary parameters – which were directly affected by climate change – and secondaryparameters – which were impacted by these changes. The fact sheet was an entirely science-drivenexercise synthesising already existing information, for example from peer-reviewed literature and re-ports. It crystallised the information into a more accessible format. The fact sheet represented a con-sensus view by the region’s climate experts through EN CLIME. In other words, the climate expertsin the network had gone through all of the information and discussed it to come to the conclusionsas they were collated and presented. The CCFS was the first in a successive series of fact sheets so thatthey would in the future be able to follow in a consistent way the progression of development for eachof these parameters from one fact sheet to the next. That would give HELCOM a time series, so tospeak, of the effects of climate change in the region.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 39Regarding direct parameters, she noted that these included physiochemical parameters that were directlyaffected by climate change. As examples, Ms Haldin mentioned temperature or salinity or solar radiation.These were aspects of the environment that were directly affected and which in turn would impact otherparts of the environment. With respect to such indirect parameters, for instance in the ecosystem, the factsheet moved from explaining direct changes to the cumulative impact of several of the primary parame-ters on the components of the ecosystem. That was the format in which the information was presented inthe fact sheet. Taking the view one step further, they were looking at the aspect of human use. The ques-tion here was how these directly affected parameters were impacting the parts of the marine environmentavailable to humans to use. This covered everything from shipping over tourism to fisheries, agriculturebut also more ephemeral concepts such as ecosystem services. Moreover, this included the ability of theecosystem to buffer or even counter climate change effects through its capacity for carbon storage. Foreach of these parameters, the fact sheet presented key messages on what was already happening – i.e.,changes that could already be seen in the environment – but also what was expected to happen – namelyprojections for climate change, explaining what would become apparent in the near to far futures. If therewere other drivers, these would also be mentioned so as to provide context. In many cases, Ms Haldinsaid, it was very difficult to disentangle the climate change effects from those caused by other anthro-pogenic factors. Therefore, the key messages explained that a significant part of the changes one couldobserve was not actually climate change-driven even though the climate was still affecting the ecosystem.The CCFS also presented knowledge gaps to better share how to improve understanding, where moreinformation needed to be gathered or more data had to be developed. That would allow the science toprovide better projections and better support for policy-making the next time around. Finally, the CCFSconsidered the policy relevance of each particular topic. These key messages were given for each of theparameters in the fact sheet, also including a set of policies. Not only did the CCFS elaborate on whatwas relevant for policies but it also showed which policies were directly linked to this particular topic.In order to be able to properly inform policy and management, some kind of indication was neededon how sure the scientists were of the information they were presenting. This was done through a levelof confidence which was indicated for each of the key message statements and sometimes even for thesub-statements within a key message. The latter was done if the confidence levels differed significantly foreach of the component statements. The approach here was the same as the one used for the IPCC wherethe level of agreement or consensus was taken into account as well as the amount of evidence availableto support a statement. With a high level of consensus as well as a high quality of evidence, a high levelof confidence was displayed. Ms Haldin said that all of the statements in the CCFS had gone throughboth initial peer review, as they had been harvested from peer-reviewed literature, but also a second stageof peer review regarding their presentation in the fact sheet. Aside from being peer-reviewed within thenetwork, she underlined that the statements had also been peer-reviewed externally. Each of them wassupported by in-depth material that was available in several publications that were clearly referenced inthe documents. Thus, it was easy to backtrack and see where this information could be found – also al-lowing interested parties to learn more in-depth details and context, if so needed.All of this was brought together in what the Climate Change Fact Sheet said about the current situation.It was quite clear through their work that climate change was evidently impacting the Baltic Sea. Its ef-fects were felt in the nature of the sea, its ecosystems as well as the human activities that were dependingon it along with the ecosystem services provided by the sea. Some direct examples were presented withhigh certainty, for example that water temperatures were rising, the extent of sea ice had decreased, andthe annual mean precipitation had increased over the northern part of the region. Here, Ms Haldin not-40 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reported that this change had a greater impact on the northern rather than the southern part. From that, shemoved on to the indirect impact examples. They included the following: Many of the wintering birds hadshifted their wintering range northwards, following the rising temperatures. Numbers of warm water fishspecies, such as sticklebacks, were increasing whereas cold water fish species, some of which were very im-portant to fishing, were decreasing. There was an increased risk of infection of human-pathogenic Vibriodue to surface water warming. Moreover, trawl fishing began earlier in the year, partly because of changesin the actual fish stocks but also because the climate now allowed for this.With that said, Ms Haldin underlined that the Baltic Sea was a very complex system as was impressivelyillustrated by her presentation. Effects and feedbacks between climatic and non-climatic factors weredisplayed in a dense network connecting the various parameters. There were multiple pressures affectingthe ecosystem at any given time, the speaker noted. Climate change was added to this like a blanketpressure adding cumulative pressure to all the existing anthropogenic factors. That, though, also meantthat climate change was not easy to understand in relation to these other pressures. The challenge lay indisentangling the climate change effects from those stemming from other anthropogenic factors, she reit-erated. Moreover, another aspect had to be mentioned, Ms Haldin said, namely that climate change andother human-induced pressures varied significantly depending on which part of the Baltic Sea one waslooking at. Taking this into account, there was no simple management solution that would work all theway across the Baltic Sea all at once. This had to be taken into account when making decisions for policiesand management and accept the fact that it was necessary to manage at a smaller scale. Interventions hadto be made at a local level where science could account for these differences. Ms Haldin spoke more aboutthe graph showing the interlinkage between the parameters included in the fact sheet. She describedclimate change as a self-feeding circle: A change in one parameter would affect others. As bewilderinglycomplex as the graph was, Ms Haldin stressed that this only mapped 34 parameters whereas in nature,many more parameters were present.When considering the multitude of anthropogenic pressures already affecting the environment, it wasalso necessary to acknowledge the state of the Baltic Sea and its biodiversity. To start with, she noted thatthe state of biodiversity was poor. The speaker presented an overview of the state of biodiversity between2011 and 2016. Following on from this period, they would soon start on the holistic assessment of thenext five-year period which would be released in 2023. In that process, it would be interesting to see ifthere was any improvement and if there was not, identify reasons for that. Referencing the biodiversitysection of the slide, she underlined that much of it was coloured in red. Unfortunately, a great deal ofit was also in a darker shade, indicating a very poor status. This had to be taken into consideration forclimate change and biodiversity in the Baltic Sea. If biodiversity was already under a significant amountof pressure, then climate change had an even stronger force – or explanatory power – when it came topushing these changes even further. Such shifts could already be seen in the distribution and behaviour ofa large number of species, as a result of climate change.The fact sheet, Ms Haldin noted, covered benthic habitats, open sea fish, coastal and migratory fish,waterbirds and seals. For all of these, changes could already be observed at this stage. Benthic habitatswere strongly related to general changes in the oceanographic conditions, i.e., warming waters leading toincreased growth of plankton and algae which in turn sank to the bottom, causing and increasing anoxicconditions. Some of these growths were now even appearing in coastal waters where they had not beenso frequent before. Rather, this used to be more of a problem in the deeper parts of the sea. Regardingopen sea, costal and migratory fish, Ms Haldin explained that there was a shift in species composition.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 41The current climate was now favouring warm water over cold water species. The timing of breeding be-haviour as well as of migration from open sea to fresh water had been altered. In some ways, this was alsorelated to the amount of available sea ice. Moreover, there was a change in the type and amount of foodthat was available to the species. That was affecting the composition overall. Fish that were historicallyimportant for fisheries were now in decline, both due to fishing pressure but also climate change. On theother hand, fish species that had historically not been so valuable for fishing were now becoming moreplentiful, indicating that a shift in fishing preferences might be about to happen. For waterbirds, earliermigration patterns were happening as well as changes in these patterns. She noted that this had implica-tions for other aspects, for instance where windfarms were placed. Breeding was also affected, both whenit began and where it took place. Climate change in the future raised the risk of extreme events, such as atemporary sea level rise. A rise like that might wipe out a whole season of breeding. Thus, extreme eventscould have disastrous effects on waterbird populations. For seals, the main effect was on the ringed sealswhich needed sea ice to breed. With very poor sea ice winters at the southern extent of the seals’ currentdistribution, the animals were doing very badly. Predictions cautioned that this might lead to ringed sealsgoing regionally extinct in those areas because they no longer had any access to those breeding spaces.For the other seal species, the changes in fish stocks were affecting them as well, both in how much wasavailable and what they were feeding on.Combining all of these factors led into what HELCOM called the ecosystem function. There was alreadya clear effect of climate change on food webs, both top-down – i.e., predation: who eats whom, why andwhen – and bottom-up – i.e., biomass production or algae production. Climate change was fundamentallychanging the functioning of the ecosystem, Ms Haldin pointed out. Looking at the future, it was highlylikely that climate change would impact several processes in food web interactions. That included how torecycle nutrients in the ecosystem as well as the ecosystem properties themselves which in turn created largeeffects on other aspects. Warmer waters would lead to more primary production, indicating a greater like-lihood of algal blooms and decreased oxygen levels because decomposing algae used up oxygen. If salinitywere to decrease, that would have a huge effect on species composition, ranging all the way from zooplank-ton to the higher levels of seals and seabirds which ate the fish and the plankton in their altered composi-tion. There was also a chance that primary production, i.e., more algae, would block more of the sunlightpassing through the water. That in turn negatively affected the benthic species living on the sea floor.Ms Haldin went on to speak about eutrophication as a big issue in the Baltic Sea. 97 per cent of the seawas affected by eutrophication to some degree. At this point, analysts could already indicate huge finan-cial losses annually, stemming solely from this issue. A major question when talking about climate changetherefore was how climate change would affect eutrophication. At the moment, though, there was no wayto separate the impact of climate change on nutrients from other pressures affecting them. That madeit impossible to say clearly whether observed effects were related to climate change or humanity’s ownbehaviour, for instance farming practices. Eutrophication had made shallow waters with limited waterexchange more prone to hypoxic events. Temporary dead bottoms in shallow areas were becoming morefrequent than they had been in the past. Because these hypoxic events were releasing nutrients from theseabed, after having been locked in there, this created a self-feeding circle that was increasing the levels ofeutrophication. She reiterated that the main driver could not be clearly identified as either climate changeor human practices.Considering what could be expected for eutrophication in the future, the speaker noted that it had beenshown in almost all of the various scenarios that the developments of nutrient loads – i.e., the amount42 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportof phosphorus and nitrogen introduced into the sea annually – was dominated by how humans behavedrather than climate change. Nevertheless, warmer waters would still have an effect through reducingnear-bottom oxygen by releasing nutrients in hypoxic events. When taking climate change into account,current load scenarios predicted a decline of 25 per cent of inorganic phosphorus dissolved in the BalticSea between 2070 and 2100. Ms Haldin conceded that this was still a fair bit into the future. On theother hand, surface concentrations would slightly increase from current loads. The dissolved inorganicnitrogen – as the other main factor in eutrophication – was expected to remain at unchanged levels. Inthe Gulf of Finland and the Bothnian Sea, though, it was expected that the nitrogen would increase whilephosphorus would be similar to the overall effects in the Baltic Sea proper. Without load reductions, thatmeant that more nutrients would be present in the water, thus feeding nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteriablooms that would likely expand in frequency.Ms Haldin underlined that climate change did not seem to be the dominating factor for eutrophicationin the Baltic Sea in the future. Rather, it was human behaviour and how nutrients – e.g., in agriculture– were being handled. Scenarios had also been run using the Baltic Sea Action Plan, assuming that all itsmeasures would be implemented. Still under climate change effects, the BSAP measures would lead toa 50 per cent decline of phosphorus overall and a decrease in its surface concentrations in the Baltic Seaproper, the Gulf of Finland and the Bothnian Sea. That showed that the measures planned for the BalticSea Action Plan could still achieve a significant reduction even under climate change. For eutrophication,the take-home message therefore was, It was humanity’s behaviour from year to year rather than climatechange that was driving eutrophication.She moved on to the human activities presented in the Climate Change Fact Sheet: shipping, tour-ism, fisheries, aquaculture and wind power. It was considered how climate change would affect these.Another concern was how these could be used in terms of policies, or in other words how the datacould drive the policy and management decisions. She presented a plot outlining how these differentparameters fed into the different types of policies, seen here at the regional scale in the Baltic Sea area.The plan was to use the available climate change information to review and adapt policies withinHELCOM under a changing climate. The existing assessment structure of HELCOM was employedto look for example at indicators for the change of the environment and then review these in light ofthe climate change effects. The next step was to consider if the procedures had to be altered, if thresh-old values should be reviewed, if a more stringent process was needed or a stronger stance should betaken on the cautionary approach. As such, the climate change information was leveraged to dig deepinto the way that the ecosystem was being assessed. This information was then taken into the planningof policies and management decisions.Finally, Ms Haldin spoke about climate change and the updated Baltic Sea Action Plan. The issue ap-peared in the BSAP both as a targeted section in the so-called horizontal segments that were relevantacross the board for all of HELCOM’s measures. In addition, it had also been incorporated individuallyinto each of the main topics, e.g., hazardous substances, marine litter, sea-based activities, eutrophicationas well as ecosystem and biodiversity. Beyond the update of the BSAP, they would incorporate the ClimateChange Fact Sheet’s key messages for example into the next holistic assessment of the environment of theBaltic Sea. There, it would become part of each of the topics rather than being presented as one unit. Inthe future, HELCOM was planning to use it to review their policies such as the recommendations butalso to support the Ministerial Meeting’s decisions, in light of the need to adapt to climate change.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 43Further referencies:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiG-7n4_oXyA-hWPT8AKHTs3DYIQFjABegQIAxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhelcom.fi%2Fhelcom-at-work%2Fe-vents%2Fevents-2021%2Fccfs-launch%2F&usg=AOvVaw0vhsxz4W_pTTWtD5D_7FjJhttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiqs9_X4oXyAhW-faRUIHWvADU0QFjADegQIBhAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fportal.helcom.fi%2Fmeetings%2FEN%-2520CLIME%25207-2021-815%2FMeetingDocuments%2F4-4%2520Climate%2520change%-2520fact%2520sheet%2520layout.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3DKxAnxWPwaiC6FFZ2sdy1Questions to the HELCOM representativesChairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked Ms Haldin for her contribution, noting that they hadnow listened to two very interesting presentations. She opened the floor for questions to their excel-lent presenters.Bodo Bahr agreed that these were very informative and interesting presentations, pointing out that, inhis view, the core sentence had been said by Mr Strempel. HELCOM’s Executive Secretary had notedthat a lot had been done but much more had yet to be done. Bodo Bahr referred to the gap betweenwhat had been implemented at the international level on the one hand and at the national level bythe countries and the regions on the other. That revealed how much more needed to be achieved inthis direction. He reminded his listeners that the BSPC had already discussed this gap in 2018 inMariehamn. In the BSPC resolution of that year, they had called for action and said that it was urgentto intensify efforts at the national and regional level to set appropriate policy priorities so as to achievethe objectives of the BSAP as far as possible on schedule. He further noted that the BSPC had beenfollowing this progress in general for some twelve or fourteen years, trying to do more. With respectto that, Mr Bahr asked what signs there were for optimism that the goal of a good ecological status ofthe Baltic Sea would be achieved in 2030. He asked what had to be done in terms of the instrumentsin place and how long it was necessary to implement HELCOM recommendations at the nationaland regional level by incorporating them into national law. The same difference between internationaland national or regional efforts could also be seen in many other areas. Sometimes, at the nationallevel, it took two or four years until the implementation had been decided in the various countries.Bodo Bahr further mentioned that there had been a presentation by Prof Christoph Humborg, Scien-tific Director of the Stockholm University Baltic Sea Centre. Prof Humborg had told the BSPC thatthe marine protected areas, despite their name, could be used for different purposes. The BSPC, whencalling for such marine protected areas some twenty years earlier, had believed that these would beprotected in fact and not just in name. In that respect, he asked what could be done to keep them clearof human usage and whether there were any discussions in that regard in the new Baltic Sea ActionPlan. When the BSPC had been discussing the topic as a whole with the European Commission oneyear before, Mr Bahr had asked the latter what could be done to make faster progress in this effort andto do more. The answer by the Commission had been to reduce emissions, reduce emissions, reduceemissions. On the other hand, he posited the question of how this goal could be reached effectively.44 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportCecilie Tenfjord-Toftby chimed in that Bodo Bahr had pinpointed a very important aspect, vital also forthe Working Group’s halfway report to be presented at the BSPC’s annual conference in August 2021.Jannica Haldin conceded that she would not be able to answer the entire breadth of questions askedby Bodo Bahr. But as she was working a lot with the marine protected areas, she could provide anupdate on the present situation. The actions in this respect were still under discussion for the updateof the BSAP. That said, the intention was to link the BSAP’s actions with those under the EU Biodi-versity Strategy. In that, she pointed out that the latter set a percentage goal for strictly protected areaswhere human use of any kind – other than scientific – should be minimised. Nonetheless, discussionswere still ongoing at the EU as well on how to define these strictly protected areas. HELCOM wasplanning to use a similar percentage goal in the Baltic Sea Action Plan as well. That would then be agoal targeting the environment and the marine protected areas specifically rather than the overall tenper cent for all protected areas, both land and sea. The latter, she explained, was what the BiodiversityStrategy was concerned with.Rüdiger Strempel wished to add one aspect. It was always necessary to be aware that the Baltic Searegion was covered by a dense network of processes, mechanisms, institutions and legislations. Therewas the EU on the one hand but on the other, there was Russia. Both were key players, and both need-ed to be taken into consideration. As he had mentioned in his presentation, HELCOM was workingto essentially link their work to that of global processes as well. He believed that there was a majorissue, one that he kept coming back to in many presentations, namely that they had to ensure consist-ency between these various levels and processes as well as instruments that the former were governedby. He underlined that this was very important, both with regard to climate change and biodiversitybut also an overall good environmental status for the Baltic Sea region. Consistency was a key factor.In this regard, he reiterated his call to the parliamentarians to play their role in this pursuit.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked both presenters again and voiced her hope that theBSPC would be able to visit them at the HELCOM offices in Helsinki in the near future. The in-formation that they had provided the BSPC with would be very valuable for the Working Groupin writing their report. She also mentioned that the question she would have asked had alreadybeen answered by Mr Strempel in his comments about what parliamentarians could contribute. MsTenfjord-Toftby stressed how important it was for parliamentarians to know their role in this effort.HELCOM represented scientists while the BSPC was composed of policy-makers. Together, theycould make a change.She went on to introduce the next speaker, Ms Linda Kumblad, Associate Professor in Systems Ecol-ogy at Stockholm University and Project Leader BalticSea 2020, who would speak on the theme:Regaining a good ecological status in coastal areas – is that possible? She noted that the speaker wasaccompanied by Mr Emil Rydin, Associate Professor in Limnology, Baltic Sea Centre, StockholmUniversity who would provide additional comments to the parliamentarians’ questions.Ms Tenfjord-Toftby referred back to the HELCOM presentations which had underlined that MsKumblad’s topic was ultimately the core issue of the Baltic Sea Action Plan and the demands in theBSPC resolutions. Finding solutions to reach a good ecological status was one of the main tasks in theBaltic Sea cooperation.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 45Ms Linda Kumblad, Associate Professor in Systems Ecology at Stockholm University, Project LeaderBalticSea 2020 &Mr Emil Rydin, Associate Professor in Limnology, Baltic Sea Centre, Stockholm UniversityPresentation: Regaining good ecological status in coastal areas is that possible?Regaining good ecological status incoastal areas – is that possible?Linda Kumblad & Emil RydinBaltic Sea Center, Stockholm UniversityPresentation: Effective measures againsteutrophicationhttps://balticsea2020.org/english/Living Coast ProjectMs Linda Kumblad thanked the WorkingGroup very much for inviting both of thepresenters and allowing them to showcase Effectivetheir very exciting project, Living Coast. Ithad now been running for 10 years which, measures againstshe underlined, was quite a long time. Ineutrophicationher presentation, she would move fromthe Baltic Sea scale down to the local scale,talking about a bay that Mr Rydin and she– a story about regaininghad been working with. The project had good ecological status in coastal areasbeen initiated and funded by the privatefoundation BalticSea 2020. During the Linda Kumblad & Emil rydinlast two years, it had been hosted by Stock-holm University where they had focusedon the evaluation of the results of theproject. Moreover, they had also receivedsome funding from the Swedish Agency ofEffEctivE mEasurEs against Eutrophication • 1Marine and Water Management.46 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportThe project Living Coast, Ms Kumblad explained, was a full-scale marine remediation project withthe aim of trying to achieve a good ecological status in severely eutrophied coastal areas that had alarge extent of anoxic bottoms and limited water exchange. Thus, these areas shared many of thefactors that were true of the Baltic Sea as a whole as well. As a matter of fact, the project had select-ed one of the most eutrophied bays of the area outside the Stockholm archipelago. There, they hadundertaken a lot of measures, both in the catchment area and the bay itself, to reduce the nutrienttransport into the water. In addition, they had performed frequent monitoring in the bay as well as ina reference bay to evaluate the results of the implemented measures. Within the project, a lot of efforthad been put into communication, trying to spread the results and recommendations to stimulateaction in other areas. Ms Kumblad presented a map showing the coastal area outside Stockholm,coloured to represent the respective ecological status. Most areas had an insufficient ecological status,with very few exceptions that had a better status. One of the exceptions, marked in green as having agood status, was in fact Björnöfjärden, the bay where the project was situated. It had been red beforeLiving Coast had begun its work there.She proceeded to explain how that progress had been achieved. The first and very important step inthe project had been to identify the nutrient loads in the area and quantify them. That had been doneby mapping the land use in the catchment area as well as the activities there. Measurements had beentaken in all the inlets coursing into the bay. Based on the findings, calculations had been performedto determine the nutrient transport from land to the water. Moreover, the anthropogenic and naturalnutrient loads from the catchment area had been calculated so as to be able to estimate the actionpotential and select the most cost-efficient measures and prioritise these. Ms Kumblad reminded herlisteners of the importance of seeking to reduce both nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to combateutrophication. The present project, though, had often focused on phosphorus because that was thelimiting nutrient in the bay. Furthermore, many of the available measures frequently targeted phos-phorus. At the same time, nitrogen was often reduced through such measures as well.Ms Kumblad showed a map of the bay Björnöfjärden and its catchment area. This area, she noted, hadmuch in common with the Baltic Sea as a whole. They often called it the “Baltic Sea in miniature”. Forinstance, the bay had a limited water exchange since there was a narrow strait and a sill at one end ofits extent. This limited water exchange both made the eutrophication situation worse in Björnöfjärdencompared to the water outside, but it also made it possible to detect the effects of the measures theproject had performed in the area. Stylised images were placed around the map she showed, illustratingboth the nutrient sources in the catchment area and the measures that had been undertaken to reducethe nutrient inputs. Also listed were the numbers calculated for the annual phosphorus input from therespective source to the water. The external load – in other words, the load generated by the land sources– summed up to approximately 200 kilograms of phosphorus per year entering the Baltic Sea. That wasfar less than another number, indicating that the sediment of the bay yielded nearly 600 kilograms ofphosphorus per year. The sediment phosphorus represented the so-called internal load. It was old phos-phorus which had entered the bay from land over the past decades. If this had been a healthy bay, muchof this phosphorus would have been bound to the sediment. But since most of the bottom areas wereanoxic, their capacity to bind the chemical was very poor. Therefore, much of the fixated phosphoruswas released from the sediment each year back into the water, reinforcing the eutrophication.When looking at the figures, she noted that it might be easy to wish to focus only on the sedimentbecause it was so large. Yet it was important to remember that the loads from the land sources repre-Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 47sented an annual addition to the pool of phosphorus already in the bay. Thus, it was very important toreduce the external load as well. Otherwise, year by year, more and more phosphorus would be addedto this pool, making it even greater.Looking at the measures undertaken to reduce nutrient input, Ms Kumblad first mentioned theirinterventions in agriculture to lower the inputs from those activities. Others had targeted the nutrientload from horse keeping. A great deal of effort had also been put into helping people living aroundthe bay with poor sewage systems. The goal had been to get them to change to better sewage systemsso those no longer affected the bay. The same problem affected a conference centre in the north of thecatchment area. Shifting to the internal load created by sediment emissions, the project had employeda well-known lake restoration method, using an aluminium treatment to bind the phosphorus to thesediment. On top of all that, the local stocks of predatory fish had also been strengthened throughrespective measures to bolster the recruitment of pike, for instance.Summarising the actions, the speaker explained that the nutrient load into the water prior to theproject had been approximately 840 kilograms of phosphorus per year. Afterwards, that number hadshrunk to only 240 kilograms each year. In total, that came out as a reduction of phosphorus by circa70 per cent all in all. The major decline had been due to the aluminium treatment where the internalphosphorus load had been reduced from 600 to 100 kilograms per year. The external load, though,had also decreased by a wide margin. She reiterated the importance of such a decrease in order to beable to maintain the improved water quality achieved by the measures. To visualise the changes, shepresented two pie charts listing the various nutrient sources and their amounts, one illustrating theload prior to the interventions and one afterwards.One question was how to determine if there had indeed been an improvement in the water. MsKumblad pointed out that, during the 10 years the project had been in operation, they had followedthe ecosystem quite closely by monitoring the water, vegetation, fish, bottom fauna etc. These inves-tigations had shown that the phosphorus concentration had been cut in half which had led to severalpositive developments: Less phytoplankton in the water had in turn improved the secchi depth. Thewater had become clearer, allowing more sunlight to pass through, so that benthic algae could befound at greater depths. Moreover, the oxygenation of the bottom water had been improved, especial-ly in the mid-levels of the water. Fish and benthos had also been found in deeper sections of the bay.Finally, they had observed a change in the fish composition in the area.Moving on to a summary and conclusions, Ms Kumblad said they had shown that it was indeedpossible to improve the environmental status in this kind of ecosystem. They had learned that itwas important to reduce the nutrient supply both from land and from the sediment. That appliedin particular with such a substantial release of phosphorus from the bottom, making it fundamentalto address this source. That allowed as quick an improvement as had been achieved in Björnöfjärdenbay. To maintain this improved water quality, she reiterated, it was equally important to reduce thenutrient supply from land. To be able to prioritise the most important and cost-efficient measures, itwas vital to put time and effort into identifying the local sources and quantifying them.It was important to take an ecosystem approach to this problem to be able to put all the knowledgetogether and successfully undertake a project like this. The crucial point she underlined was that itvery much took time both to implement all the measures needed but also for the ecosystem to re-48 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportcover. A great deal of patience was needed along with plentiful resources to implement this type ofrestoration project.Finally, Ms Kumblad presented brief summaries of other projects similar to Living Coast. One ofthose was LEVA which stood for “Local Engagement for Water” in Swedish. A fairly new project, itwas run by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management to create a new long-term ap-proach to address the complex problems surrounding eutrophication. Over 3 years, the task had beento employ remediation coordinators for what ended up being 20 pilot projects, each requiring onesuch coordinator. The task was to strengthen the local remediation work and to implement measuresagainst eutrophication. In her view, LEVA was very much important and a good project that shehoped would last longer than the planned time span. That was because three years were too short aperiod, and the funding of the project was not sufficient to go very far. Nevertheless, she deeply ap-preciated the approach.The second project she spoke about was “Living Bays” which her colleague, Mr Emil Rydin, wasworking on by that point. The name, she noted, was a working title. It concerned restoration in evensmaller bays, shallow and wave-protected that were located along the coast or in archipelagos. Thisproject would function much like “Living Coast”, implementing similar types of measures identifiedas important to do. At the same time, the goal was to achieve a true improvement of the environment.Parallel to this, there would be a lot of case studies to be able to pinpoint the effects of different stress-ors and identify suitable measures in these areas. The purpose was to determine concrete and cost-effi-cient measures and provide solid advice and recommendations for local authorities, house owners andthe like. The plan was to get a great deal done in these important and valuable areas.Finally, she highlighted one publication by the organisation BalticSea2020, Effective measures againsteutrophication which presented a lot of valuable information in a colourful way.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked her very much for a very concrete and fruitful pres-entation. She believed this would be very helpful for the working group in the future as this was a verygood example for best practices. It would help the BSPC reach their main goal of a good ecologicalstatus in the entire Baltic Sea region.She opened the floor for questions, starting with one of her own. She was curious about how thispositive change had been possible, asking which parts of society had been engaged. These might bepoliticians or governments or authorities that had helped the project succeed and implement thesemeasures. Ms Tenfjord-Toftby noted that the University of Stockholm hadn’t been able to do this ontheir own.Liz Mattsson also thanked Ms Kumblad for a very good presentation. It had been a very good examplefor a local best practice. She picked up on the presenter’s comment that such a restoration project tooka long time, requiring much patience. Her question was similar to Ms Tenfjord-Toftby’s, wonderinghow the project had managed to involve the local people in their work. She was curious how they hadgot the farmers and horse keepers to join into the efforts.Johannes Schraps also thanked all the presenters so far. His question concerned the cooperation. Henoted that all the measures that Ms Kumblad had explained would only be helpful if all countriesClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 49around the Baltic Sea would attempt to implement these. That made Ms Tenfjord-Toftby’s questioneven more relevant, concerning whom to involve. The governments or authorities had to implementthese measures, founded on laws to that end at the national level. If there were different degrees ofimplementation in the various countries in the Baltic Sea region, he was uncertain that such effortswould lead to an improvement. To that end, he asked how European cooperation through the Eu-ropean Union was working. Here, he pointed out that both the BSPC and the CBSS did not onlyinclude member states from the EU but also countries outside the union. He referred back to theHELCOM representatives saying that cooperation across the region was very important there as well.As such, he would like to hear more information about the cooperative efforts in general.Bodo Bahr agreed that this project had achieved a very impressive result, cheering for the 70 percent phosphorus reduction. He was interested in a similar concern as Mr Schraps, asking if theproject leaders knew about any similar projects in other countries and if they were cooperating withsuch comparable efforts. Reiterating Ms Kumblad’s comment about having needed 10 years for thisachievement, Mr Bahr asked if that meant that such efforts being implemented in all coastal areas atthis point would lead to a similar ecological achievement everywhere within the same 10-year span.In response to the questions, Linda Kumblad started on the first concern, how this project had beenpossible. She said that was the case partly because they were two persons who could focus their workon this issue for a long time. That allowed them to get to know the system and the opportunity to takemeasures and quantify the problem. Moreover, they had put a lot of effort into information for the localcommunities around the bay but also the local politicians in the municipality. There had been protracteddiscussions with them, seeking to involve them in the measures. Another crucial factor in her view wasthat the project had been very well funded and given resources for the measurements as well as substan-tial financing for the measures. That had allowed them to provide subsidies and, in effect, pay for themeasures undertaken. That way, the project had been able to tackle a great number of tasks at the sametime. When the activities had become more visible to the local communities – as well as the projectpursuing many different approaches with different emission sources –, the willingness to contribute hadincreased. Even those people who at the start hadn’t thought their contribution would be important hadeventually realised that it was necessary to work with all kinds of sources. As such, those had becomemore prone to doing what they could contribute. The aluminium treatment here had proved to be anadditional success in that it had helped the project visualise the effect of the measures. The locals couldsee that the water had been getting clearer, and in Ms Kumblad’s view, that had helped the contributorssee the value in e.g., cleaning their pastures and paddocks for the horses every day.Her colleague, Mr Emil Rydin, stressed the importance of being acknowledged by the landowners andthe people around the bay. The communities had trusted the project and joined into their efforts, go-ing beyond the fact that the project had been paying for most of the measures they had implemented.Linda Kumblad agreed that they had put a great deal of time into informing people and showingthem the project’s results throughout its duration. That had been very helpful for them. She addedthat the two project representatives, Ms Kumblad and Mr Rydin, had always been highly available forquestions which had equally been important.She went on to address the inquiry about the cooperation that they had generated. One key aspecthad been the local authorities, the municipality. Collaboration with them had been decisive. It had50 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportgone well, but they hadn’t had the requisite funds at the time. So, timing had been a difficult issue.The foundation behind the project had had the expectation that the work should proceed quicklywhich had turned out to be difficult when working with the local authorities. Nonetheless, the resultsspoke for themselves.Ms Kumblad referenced Mr Bahr’s question about similar projects. She had to admit that she did notknow of any projects that encompassed the full-scale approach that “Living Coast” had used, backedwith the resources necessary to monitor and evaluate the effects of the measures. There were a lot ofother projects that had implemented one or two of the measures as in this project but not all of themtogether. She conceded that there might be some she was not aware of, noting that this wide approachwas not that common.Emil Rydin spoke about the question by Mr Schraps. He understood the question as concerningwhether the Baltic Sea’s water quality would affect and override the water quality in these bays. In the“Living Coast” bay, one important factor was the limited water exchange with the open sea. Thus,there was a local effect, allowing them to see the results in this eutrophied bay. Both had a local effect,but the measures would also have a regional effect, he explained. That was because the flux of nutri-ents from the catchment area through the project’s bay into the open sea would be reduced. Mr Rydinbelieved that this was what Mr Schraps had been asking about.Liz Mattsson asked about the project’s budget for information and communication to all the partiesthat they had involved in their efforts.Linda Kumblad replied that the project did not have an allocated budget for information as such.The main costs in that area, she offered, had been the salaries of the two people running the project.They had been available for discussions, phone calls, meetings etc. That had been the main costs forcommunication. In addition, though, they had also distributed some booklets and brochures, butthe many presentations they had given had constituted the lion’s share of their outreach programme.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked the two presenters again for participating in the meet-ing of the working group. It had been very valuable and would help the BSPC improve their deci-sion-making. She was also sure that they would get back in touch with the presenters at some pointin the future.Moving on to the next presentation, the chairwoman said this would come from Ms Patricia Wiklund,Project Manager, CEO of Invenire – a strategy & communications agency working within the foodindustry, the bioeconomy and the circular economy. Her presentation had the title: How can we createimpact and bring the wow factor into sustainable, local and engaging small-scale pilot projects? Ms Ten-fjord-Toftby said that this was the perfect successor to the previous presentations and also tied intoMs Matson’s questions on how to make this possible.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 51Ms Patricia Wiklund, Project Manager, CEO of InvenirePresentation: How can we create impact & bring the wow factor into sustainable, local & engagingsmall-scale pilot projects?How can wecreate impact &bring the wowfactor intosustainable, local& engagingP A T R I C I Asmall-scale pilotW I K L U N Dprojects?CEO,www.invenire.fiMs Patricia Wiklund said she would talk about a small grassroots project with a very small budget andvery little time. It had been supposed to only run for a few months, but that had now been extendedinto the upcoming summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the measures, though, hadalready been implemented in the previous summer. Her involvement with Åland primarily concernedfood systems, nutrient cycling and the circular economy. This project had been a refreshing changefor her, focussing on what one could achieve on a very small scale with local engagement. The projectwas aiming to practice small-scale activities and then scale them up as templates for the whole system.To provide some background, Ms Wiklund said that the project had been financed by the commu-nity, specifically by the Coast Action Group in Åland, Leader and the aquaculture company BrändöLax. The latter was situated on the island in question. The budget was small, comprising only €63,000. The actors in this project were the Water Area Partnership, a nearby village, some others anda local farmer. The location had been a small island called Brändö which was between Åland andTurku, numbering about 450 inhabitants. As such, Ms Wiklund noted that she had probably spokenwith all of them over the course of the project. Brändö was characterised by having many, many smallislands, with the main islands connected via bridges and causeways. All of it, she reiterated, was verysmall-scale, out in the Baltic Sea.The project had been started because of nutrient cycling and the locals’ interest in this. Ms Wiklundhad conducted a food strategy which had led to a nearby fish farm becoming involved. Because theywere such a decisive player on this small island, the farm had also started looking into what they coulddo for the whole municipality. It was all about the landscape. The locals had noticed that their aquatic52 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportlandscape had begun to change a great deal. That had reached a tipping point a few years earlier whenthe common reed in particular had started forming very thick beds in monoculture areas. This hadnot been a problem to such a degree earlier. She presented a picture to illustrate the issue. Two of thetiny islands were separated by a narrow waterway that was almost completely overgrown with reeds.This had been a pathway earlier, Ms Wiklund pointed out, that could be crossed by boat. What wasleft was merely a small lake of open water in-between the reed growth. This overgrowing had hap-pened in only a few years. The change, therefore, was quite rapid.The aim of the project was to utilise the common reed in a regenerative way as a resource as well. Sheexplained that they could undertake any kind of measure to remove the reed, but if that could notbe turned into some kind of a local cycle, the efforts would run out of steam. Required was a way tomake use of the biomass and recycle it in some form. The speaker underlined the difficulty of keep-ing people motivated to work on the reeds. That had led to the idea of creating a cycle here while atthe same time coordinating the efforts in terms of biological diversity and contributing to better fishmanagement, especially pike, as well as shoals and improved water quality. Ms Wiklund noted thatthey had bundled a lot of different aims into their project.They had worked on two areas on the Brändö islands. She presented another picture of an area calledBolmösund, where the focus had been on harvesting as much reed as possible. The picture had beentaken in October, showing a shoreline overgrown with reeds while patches of cleared water were im-mediately adjacent to it. The patches extended only for a few meters before areas of reeds resumed,though less dense than the immediate shore area. The latter area had been fully harvested in thesummer, a few months earlier, and in October, the reed had grown back to a considerable extent. MsWiklund noted that just after this picture had been taken, the locals had gone out to cut the reeds onemore time because they had wanted to open up a landscape that had used to be free of the reeds. Asan aside, she pointed out that the clear water had been a beautiful view from the main road that ledright by the water. At the same time, the purpose of choosing this location had also been to have itvery visible to all inhabitants who would regularly drive by the area. That way, people would becomemore aware of what was going on with the reeds. In this area, the speaker underlined, the efforts hadall been about getting out as many tonnes of reed as possible with the limited resources available.The other area she showed was called Söderholmen, situated a bit further away from Bolmösund.This picture showed a roughly triangular water area, bordered at the top of the image by a tree-cov-ered shoreline. Ms Wiklund explained that this had been an area with a lot of cultural heritage. Theleft-hand top corner presented a swathe of reeds right ahead of the tree line that the speaker notedhad once been a meadow where the cows had gone in the summer. The farmers had used this andall other possible pastures. Before the project had started, the entire water area taking up most of thepicture had been covered by reeds. The project had opened up a lagoon in the middle and cut openthe pathway to the little island. They had also created various channels cutting through the reed fieldswhich served to help the fish in the area. What was left to be done was the aforementioned meadow,to try to bring that back to life as a pasture. Reducing the reeds meant restoring the beach that wascurrently overgrown.Some of the measures taken had been about harvesting the biomass, getting the reed out in ratherdifficult conditions, handling but also testing it. She showed a picture of a very small agriculturaltool that had been forgotten for thirty years. This had come back into use for the latter purpose. InClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 53addition, they had tried to put the reed to use in agriculture, for instance to cover the ground in asmall greenhouse but also to improve the soil structure in fields. These were just a few examples, shenoted. Other measures concerned fish welfare and reproduction areas, such as habitat improvements,creating the various pathways, lagoons, channels and blue borders, so as to open up areas. That wouldmake it easier for the fish to succeed. Ms Wiklund noted that fish was very important for this littleisland group’s tourism, thus it was a topic of concern for everyone there. Another measure was the oneshe had mentioned earlier, restoring a meadow for pasture. She described going to that island as enter-ing a dream world, with an old landscape that had been there before, with a very rich biodiversity. Theproject had also had an expert present to look at what was there and how it could be supported. Theaim was to bring cows back to this meadow in the summer so that it would come back in use. At thesame time, they were also working with game because that was also important for the islands. Theywanted to make sure that there were no conflicts in interest between wildlife and agricultural use.She added some thoughts about how they had worked in the project. At the heart had been a livingsystem thinking, seeking to use a couple of core concepts: interconnectedness, circular, emergence,wholes, synthesis and relationships. Their attempt had been to be as interconnected as possible; tothink circular all the time – which she conceded could be challenging –; to consider the whole asemerging, something that one had to let happen; to think not of parts but of the whole; not to ana-lyse so much but to create a synthesis instead; and to focus very much on relationships in all that wasdone. That meant for the present project that their strength so far had been that they had been ableto engage very passionate, knowledgeable people. They had also made quite surprising combinations.Ms Wiklund had used her own network to bring in people from various different areas, coming fromagriculture, fishery, farm management, forestry and others. She had also ensured that these peoplewould connect between themselves because then something new would emerge from this network,strengthening the system. Moreover, they had made use of local strengths. They had found great peo-ple who were very knowledgeable. What had been needed was to get them involved in the project andto provide them with a platform to show what they could do.With a project like this, she emphasised that fuzzy goals should be allowed. One should know moreor less where one wanted to go but without setting everything in stone at the beginning. That openedup the opportunity of learning by doing. Even though the present project had been small and wouldnot change the world, it had led to something vital happening, in every involved person. She believedthat if even just ten of these people would go out and do the next project, that would lead to a greatimpact. Another aspect was that they had let solutions emerge because it was not always possible tostick to the original plan when one was out there on a remote island. It was necessary to let thingshappen in such cases. One important thing was to benefit from the “island mentality”. She mentionedan example: Three hours into their first harvesting session, the harvester had broken down. It wasa problem that would normally take three or four days to fix on the mainland. But a local personhappened to have all the necessary parts in his machine shop and managed to repair the harvesterin a matter of minutes, so that the operation could continue. That was the great thing with islandmentality, Ms Wiklund said: One should never plan anything. Instead, one should just head out, andeverything would sort itself out.Finally, she called on people in other such efforts to dare to be original and dare to have big goals. Onevery important aspect was to see the project as part of a bigger whole. The project in question only hada small impact as such; it would not last long. But by considering it as one step in a chain of many54 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportother projects, she was quite optimistic what these kinds of small projects could achieve. At the sametime, it was also crucial to keep them scalable and replicable. She offered her hope that somebody elsecould do more or less the same things her project had done and take these ideas further.With that, she concluded her presentation on their project in the Brändö islands.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked her for the very interesting presentation that connect-ed very well to the preceding presentation from the University of Stockholm. She reflected on whatthey had heard on this day: It was necessary to sort their work into different levels, the global, theEuropean, the national and the local level. This day had shown that they would have to do both. Sheaddressed Ms Wiklund on her remarks that 450 people had been involved in her project and that ithad to be scalable. Ms Tenfjord-Toftby asked if Ms Wiklund could see this project at a larger scale orwhether it had been the closeness of the people that had made it possible.Patricia Wiklund confirmed that it could be scaled up but insisted that it had to be done in such away that local nodes as she had described would be found, thus constituting small projects that werelinked together into a greater effort. In her mind, a crucial aspect was that the people involved in theproject had to really care about what they were doing. This was the limiting factor with regard tothese projects, how far the caring aspect could be stretched. This was decisive because caring aboutthe results functioned as a motivator for action. As long as that was the case, then things would behappening. On the other hand, if stretched too far and people didn’t care, the willingness to act aspectwould be lost.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby commented that everybody on Ms Wiklund’s project hadseemed to know why they were doing anything.Patricia Wiklund quickly quashed that notion, insisting that that had absolutely not been the case.Everyone had been asking what would be happening. That, she underlined, had been the hard partof the project. On the other hand, every time somebody had stopped to inquire about the process,that had given her a chance to talk about it and what it meant to them. That had been their focus,asking what kind of landscape the locals wanted and what they could do to achieve that goal. Thatway, everyone was involved and felt like they could contribute, even through small things. So, thegoal had to be something that the locals could visualise. Returning to the question, she underlinedagain that many taking part had not known why they had been doing this. Indeed, many still did notunderstand the full extent but at least that something was happening.Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked Ms Wiklund for her participation which was very val-uable. She noted that this meant homework for the working group, considering how to scale up whatthey had heard from both Ms Wiklund and the representatives of the University of Stockholm, up tothe level of the entire Baltic Sea area, the European area and the global area. They would not be ableto succeed without having a dialogue with the people that were concerned.For the next presentation, Ms Tenfjord-Toftby noted that they would be leaving the Baltic Sea, head-ing out to the Atlantic. Their next expert was Ms Gréta María Grétarsdóttir, Managing Director ofInnovation, Social Responsibility and Investor Relations at the Seafood Company Brim in Iceland.The chairwoman noted that Ms Grétarsdóttir was an example of how highly successful sportswomenClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 55can become highly successful businesswomen. Mr Bahr had sent her a link to a YouTube video of MsGrétarsdóttir speaking before a captivated audience with her exciting remarks, getting the whole hallswinging. Ms Tenfjord-Toftby noted how impressive that performance had been before leaving thescreen to the expert.Ms Gréta María Grétarsdóttir, Managing Director of Innovation, Social Responsibility andInvestor Relations at the Seafood Company Brim in IcelandPresentation: Best practices BRIMTHE ROAD TO SUSTAINABLE AND ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY FISHINGCASE STUDY OF BRIMBSPC meeting15th of March 2021Ms Gréta María Grétarsdóttir thanked the working group for inviting her. She had recently joinedthe company Brim in Iceland and would tell her listeners about the enterprise’s journey and role inenvironmentally friendly fishing. Regarding their background, she explained that Brim was one ofthe largest seafood companies in Iceland, focussing on both fishing and processing. Moreover, theyalso had sales channels of their own. In fishing, they were targeting both ground fish and pelargicfish. Brim had been formed when two older companies had merged in 1985, with the joint history ofthe original companies going back to the 1940s. As such, Brim was nearly 80 years old. Respect forthe environment and the marine ecosystem was the basis for all of their activities, she explained. Inevery one of their actions, they were mindful of how they were impacting the environment. The mainimpact of the seafood industry on the environment was oil use, Ms Grétarsdóttir said.Iceland’s main export was raw aluminium, but fish followed very closely. In the 1970s, the island’sjurisdiction had been expanded from 12 miles up to 200 miles. As such, the jurisdiction of Icelandconsisted to 88 per cent of sea. With that expansion, the number of boats and fishing vessels had56 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportincreased. Fishing fleets from other nations had been using the waters outside the original 12-milezone, which now belonged to Iceland. Some 30 years earlier, Iceland had counted some 2,000 vesselsin its own fleet, decreased in the last few years to a little over 1,500 at the end of 2020. Nevertheless,they were fishing the same amount.Ms Grétarsdóttir wished to say a little bit about the fisheries management system which was veryimportant. This was the foundation for sustainable fishing. In 1983, legislation called Total AllowableCatch (TAC) had been introduced, first enacted in 1984. The key to this law’s success had proven tobe that the decision on the TAC for each stock was not made by the companies or the governmentsbut by the scientists. The Marine and Freshwater Research Institute decided how much the companiescould fish every year. That was what made Iceland’s fishing sustainable because there was no overfish-ing. If that system had not been started in the 1980s, Ms Grétarsdóttir doubted fish could still be oneof the main exports of her homeland. As such, that had been an important step.Moving on to the fishing vessels in the area, she pointed out that the average age of the fleet was amatter of decades – 30 years, to be precise. If any measure was implemented today, it would take along time to be implemented. For most companies, purchasing new ships was a very large investment.Therefore, time had to be allowed for any such changes. If emissions were to be reduced or differentengines used, it would take time for companies to implement these new regulations. The speaker es-timated that fifteen to twenty years would be needed before results of decisions made today could beseen. With respect to oil use in both fishing fleet and fishmeal plants, that had been decreasing in thepast decades. For the latter, the company Brim was attempting to run them solely on electricity, andIceland was working on improving the infrastructure to implement green electricity to run factoriesall over the country. She gave the example of a factory in the east of Iceland where not enough powerwas available to run the fishmeal plant solely on electricity. That would change in the next coupleof years, though. Moreover, Ms Grétarsdóttir underlined that in her mind, the fishing industry hadrealised that oil use was one of its primary impacts. As for her company, she noted that Brim’s oil usewas around 80 per cent of their emissions. As such, it had become clear to the industry that a changewas needed. In fact, oil use had been decreasing in the seafood sector. Nevertheless, she cautioned thatother sectors had seen a rise: For example, with a growing population of the island, more cars werebeing operated. That number had also increased due to Iceland having become a tourist attraction.That in turn meant an increased use of oil.In a more general view of sustainability, Ms Grétarsdóttir reiterated that the fisheries management sys-tem had been the foundation for sustainable fishing. The reason was that controlling the amount offishing allowed for healthier and more plentiful stocks. In turn, that made it easier to locate and catchthe fish. Therefore, less time had to be spent on sea, resulting in lower oil use. In fact, the catches per dayspent at sea had increased significantly. The speaker underlined this aspect, noting that all the stocks thathad not been common in Iceland during the previous jurisdiction were now available for fishing. Sus-tainable fishing had also encouraged innovation because there was just a certain amount that could becaught, and accordingly, the available resources had to be used efficiently. The value of what a ship couldcatch had to be increased. It was very important for the company Brim as well as the rest of the Icelandicfisheries that the stocks remain healthy. To that end, every catch and operation at sea was logged – notonly by Brim but by every company -, creating reliable, transparent and traceable data. That was key forthe future, she said. Without healthy stocks, fishing operations would have to cease in two years. Thatmade it easy to link the sustainability of the stocks to the survival of the company.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 57Ms Grétarsdóttir presented ashort video overviewing the en-terprise Brim’s efforts.https://vimeo.com/365812912https://vimeo.com/366216779The video, she noted, had beenput together at the beginningof their journey. In the clip,sketched outlines of the Icelan-dic coast were presented, with avoiceover saying that Iceland’s nature was generous when treated with care. The truth was best reflectedin the seas surrounding the country. The adage “out of sight, out of mind” had often been quoted whenturning a blind eye to pollutants in the sea. While the video highlighted more detailed depictions of fish-ing vessels in a magnifying glass, the voiceover continued that they now knew better. For over 30 years,Brim had minimised its negative impact on the environment, through integration and optimisation. Atthe same time, they had strengthened the positive impacts. The video focussed on an individual vessel.Fewer and more efficient ships, the narrator said, made better use of fuel. By renewing their fleet, Brimhad eliminated the use of heavy fuels and increased their use of eco-friendly energy sources, for exampleby connecting their ships to electricity and geothermal heating when docking. This was illustrated in theimagery before switching to another magnifying glass view, picking out a factory on the coast with shipspassing by. Continuing the narration, it said that the same was true for Brim’s fishmeal plants which previ-ously had run on oil but were now mostly powered by electricity. That was the same as the company’s otherprocessing plants which had been running on electricity for years. Showing the processing in the plant, thevoiceover explained that the processing methods had been developed with the aim of fully utilising all rawmaterials, reducing waste and creating added value along the way. By monitoring specific environmentalaspects of their operations, Brim received real-time updates and a detailed overview of developments. Thismonitoring operation was depicted in the video by a stylised computer screen showing various graphs,e.g., for electricity, fuel oil, water or waste. The narration pointed out that this allowed the company tosee where they could do better. They were constantly working to improve themselves. Shifting to a wasterecycling centre, the voiceover stated that the company was sorting waste both at sea and on land. Wher-ever possible, waste was being recycled. Keeping the work environment clean improved the staff’s safetyand quality of life. It also contributed to a healthier atmosphere at the enterprise’s places of work. Thatway, they were creating a viable community, as shown by more stylised images of the surroundings of oneof Brim’s plants. Not only did that concern sustainability improvements, but it made them happen, thenarrator insisted. The video ended with the company’s logo and slogan “Respect for natural resources”.Ms Grétarsdóttir next spoke about a large project that the company was very proud of. They werealways seeking to protect the environment both at land and on sea. Especially in the marine envi-ronment, fishing produced a lot of waste, but to some degree, trawling also caught trash in the nets.Everything was brought back to land and sorted there. In addition, their concern was also to clean upthe sea. Here, she referred to one of the earlier presentations by Ms Kumblad on cleaning up a bay.Brim’s focus was on clearing the coastal areas, and Ms Grétarsdóttir saw them as close to achievingthat goal. The company knew that this was a very important effort for the sector to have the coastalareas clean and limit their own input into the ecosystem. In general, environmental issues were one of58 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportthe greatest challenges in the fisheries sector. Brim was promoting responsibility in all its operations,she stressed. In 2018, the firm’s journey on this path had begun with a sustainability report for theyear 2017. In that respect, she noted that all of the company’s sustainability reports were available ontheir website. The speaker had found the preceding presentation very interesting in that Brim hadalso realised this effort would take time, specifically to map out all the aspects of their operations.There were no guidelines on what should be done and in what order. It was important to learn alongthe way. Equally, they always had to look for the next project to follow up on previous undertakings.To that end, the company had bundled its environmental efforts under the name “Cleaner Value Chainin Fisheries”. The goals of the programme were to ensure knowledge of all of the impacts on the environ-ment caused by the enterprise, from fishing to market. Thus, they identified the origins of their carbonfootprint. Every year, the company had been adding to their database. At the beginning, they had lookedat their oil use, not just in general but also per catch and per species that was being fished. In the previ-ous year, transportation of their products had been added. Currently, they were adding the packagingof their products. Ms Grétarsdóttir said that they were always taking the next step in this process. Withthat, they were systematically reducing their negative environmental impact. As for waste reduction, shenoted that the company had three sorting stations in three operating locations. It was very important tohave quantification data, allowing them to see if they were reaching their goals.Another key project was data collection. By mapping their value chain and the impact on the envi-ronment, the company could identify the spots where to leverage their efforts. In that pursuit, Brimhad partnered up with other companies to establish the database and data collection. However, theyhad realised that their partners were not providing services as extensive as desired, and so, Brim hadbrought these efforts in-house. An engineering company was verifying Brim’s calculations. The speakerunderlined the necessity of having reliable data that was as close to real-time as possible. To that end, shepresented an example. When vessels were leaving shore, Brim could monitor the speed and oil use as wellas the catch. The latter was even distinguished by species. Moreover, this data allowed the comparisonof the vessels in their fleet, to see for instance why one ship was using less oil than another. This wasimportant for the company. She noted another example, i.e., that ships were using more oil heading outthan back in. In addition, the oil use increased on long fishing trips. Here, she reiterated that healthy andplentiful fish stocks meant that less oil was used in locating and catching sufficient amounts.In the next slide of her presentation, Ms Grétarsdóttir spoke about the keys for success of the compa-ny. There would always be someone in a company who did not believe in the value of environmentalprotection efforts. It was about finding projects that could be used to both minimise the impact onthe environment and have a good operational impact. Both went hand in hand. Again, she stated thatby not taking this matter seriously, jobs would be lost in two years’ time. The customers would chooseto go somewhere else if a company did not honestly tackle this problem. In the seafood industry, in-vestments usually had a long lifetime. They had to be carbon-neutral, she insisted. That had to be thegoal. Moreover, this process was never finished – one always had to look for new projects, for furtherimprovements. But at the heart of the matter was that the decision had to be made to pursue this goal,that one would do everything possible to decrease the impact on the environment.Coming to the end of her presentation, she showed another video that was made after the company Brimhad won an award at the end of 2019 as the Icelandic environmental company of the year. The video beganwith a series of short sequences of a harbour and ships in motion. The voiceover introduced Brim as theClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 59environmental company of 2019 in Iceland. Brim was an established fisheries company with operations inReykjavik, Akranes and Vopnafjörður. Brim had directed major efforts at environmental issues as part ofits emphasis on corporate social responsibility and respect for the environment. The company had workedon mapping its impact and responsibility. Brim had adopted targets and measurements for performance,reduction of waste and value increase. Now the video shifted to the then-CEO of Brim, Mr GuðmundurKristjánsson, saying that Icelanders believed themeselves to be the world leaders in environmentally friendlyfisheries and were planning to continue on that path. He believed they would be carbon-neutral by the year2050. To achieve that goal, one had to have a clear vision and very good staff. Accompanied by imagery fromthe offices, ships and factories of the company, the voiceover continued that Brim had effectively reducedgreenhouse gas emissions, invested in new technology and vessels – all of which had delivered substantialresults. Returning to Mr Kristjánsson, the executive explained that private enterprises, government and sci-entists all needed to work together. They had to formulate an environmental plan and follow it to the letter.The narrator said that, from the year 2005 on, Brim’s oil consumption had been reduced by almost 50 per cent. Acaption in the video specified that as 46 per cent. While at dock, the voiceover went on, the ships stocked up onnatural hot water and green electricity. Brim’s fishmeal plants had previously run on oil but had now switched tohydroelectric power. The video caption here read 87 per cent reduction in oil consumption. The then-CEO wasshown again, saying that Brim had renewed their fleet, both freezer trawlers and pelagic vessels. They had replacedfour older pelagic vessels with two new ones which not only caught more fish but also consumed far less oil. Thatmeant considerably less pollution and a much smaller carbon footprint. The enterprise’s plan was to continueon this path. The voiceover said that responsible fisheries had helped build up strong fishing stocks in the oceanssurrounding Iceland. Sustainable fishing and processing were a key factor. Mr Kristjánsson said that they had totake these issues seriously. They had listened when the experts had told them in the 1980s that they had been over-fishing. Even if not everyone had agreed at first, they had changed their ways. Today, everyone could see that it hadbeen the right decision. The company wanted to deliver their fishing stocks to future generations, in a better shapethan their predecessors had received them. The narrator said that Brim’s processing methods had been developedwith the aim of fully utilising all raw materials, reducing waste and adding value along the value chain. The compa-ny ran its own recycling plants and kept track of all the waste. All environmental data was streamed from its source,both on land and at sea, to an operational database. The ships and processing plants sorted the waste before it wassubmitted to the recycling plants. The proportion of sorted waste had risen from 37 per cent to 76 per cent in thepreceding five years. A caption repeated the numbers. Brim’s Director of Procurement and Operational Control,Ingólfur Steingrímsson, stated that by now, they were mostly looking at the main factors, such as oil consumption.They were also looking into waste disposal. The company had set up monitoring devices, both in their recyclingplants and in their offices where they received real-time updates every 15 minutes. Through technology, theyobtained a detailed overview of their carbon footprint. The voiceover explained that waste had value. Brim’s usedstyrofoam boxes received an unexpected afterlife when they were reborn as mirrors and frames. Mr Steingríms-son added that he found it most pleasing that their styrofoam waste – which, according to the EnvironmentalAgency took up to 90 years to break down in nature – became a recycled product within a matter of months.The narrator said that Brim’s then-CEO believed that running a strict environmental policy really paid off. Here,Mr Kristjánsson himself noted that they now understood that a strong and sustainable environmental policy wasboth good for their business and society as a whole. The voiceover continued that the world of land and oceansfaced various environmental threats and challenges, yet Mr Kristjánsson was optimistic. He said that he hadalways been an optimistic person. Meeting young people today told him that they did not have to worry aboutthe future. Receiving this award gave them a push to continue on the course they were on. The video, and thusMs Grétarsdóttir’s presentation, ended here.60 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportWorking group discussionKolbeinn Ottarsson Proppé thanked Ms Grétarsdóttir for her presentation. He had taken note of oneslide concerning the company’s efforts to reduce their CO footprint, among others by reducing oil2usage. In the slide, it had been stated that they did not have any concrete guidelines to follow. He wascurious about this issue and how she felt about the responsibility of government in providing suchguidelines.Bodo Bahr commented that it was impressive what Brim was doing. He asked if they were also in-volved in developments to use vessels with fuel cells and hydrogen in the future. In that respect, heinquired how long it would take to switch to such engine types, starting in the present day. Hydro-gen-based engines, after all, would mean zero emissions. He knew that there were intensive efforts touse hydrogen with crossliners but it should also be usable for fishing vessels like those in Brim’s fleet.Furthermore, he was curious if Ms Grétarsdóttir knew about other seafood companies which werestrengthening their efforts in safeguarding the environment.Gréta María Grétarsdóttir first addressed the question by her fellow Icelander, Mr Proppé, on whatthe government could do. The incentive to switch from oil to alternative energy sources was impor-tant. She conceded that fishing vessels had not achieved this goal yet. Their plans were to start withsmall boats carrying hybrid engines, using oil and something else. The latter might be batteries orliquid natural gas (LNG), perhaps methane or hydrogen. There were other solutions, though. Whenfocussing on emissions and the carbon footprint, it was possible to clean the emissions from theships. The pollution from the ship’s engines were put through so-called scrubbers that reduced theemissions. However, the amount of oil used remained the same. In Iceland, a carbon tax was levied,correlated to the amount of oil consumed. Therefore, an investment in such scrubber technology todecrease emissons would not change the amount of carbon tax to be paid. She pinpointed this as anexample of things that governments could do to push companies into renewing a lot of technology,for instance on board. That could be implemented well before a full switch to renewable energy sourc-es could be established.She went on to speak about the development of other energy sources. Brim was following the develop-ment of batteries. In her opinion, it was necessary to install these first in the small boats. From there,they would scale up to larger ships, such as ferries and further. She compared the prospects here tocars where one would always start with a hybrid model. Just to be safe, two engines or energy sourceswould be in place. With fishing vessels, some stayed out at sea for up to 30 days, representing thelongest journeys of Brim’s ships. Relying on battery power for that long seemed risky to her. Smallervessels, though, would be equipped with alternate power sources sooner. She knew of ships poweredby liquid natural gas such as methane or hydrogen and considered this the next step. This would prob-ably come sooner than the batteries. As for similar companies, she did not have a concrete example inmind. However, she believed that all the seafood companies intent on staying alive in two years hadto be on a similar course. Along with developing products, it was necessary to develop one’s businessmodel as well. Any firm that did not take environmental concerns seriously would not have customersin the future. If companies had not realised this by now, they would have a lot of catching up to doin the next couple of years. The solution had to be in place before customers started complaining orasking for something. Ms Grétarsdóttir pointed out that it was also a good marketing strategy to bethe first to adopt such new solutions.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 61Chairwoman Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby thanked Ms Grétarsdóttir and the other presenters for theirvaluable contributions to the very important work of the working group. They had heard a lot aboutlocal initiatives and local participation as well as the necessity of scaling up models. Regarding thelast presentation, she said that what worked in the Atlantic Ocean would also work in the Baltic Sea.She especially thanked her co-chair, Mr Proppé, for introducing the working group to Brim and MsGrétarsdóttir. That had been very valuable. She thanked the presenters again, assuring them that theircontributions would be reflected in the group’s work. Furthermore, Ms Tenfjord-Toftby voiced herhope that the working group could come back to the experts if new questions should arise.In one of the videos, they had also heard the then-CEO of Brim talk about meeting young people.Later on, the working group would be speaking about involving young people in their work.After the experts’ presentations, the Working Group CCB discussed the aims and ways of theirwork, agreeing to mainly focus on regional aspects of the Baltic Sea region. Chairwoman CecilieTenfjord-Toftby announced that a Youth Forum would be held in conjunction with the BSPC An-nual Conference in Stockholm in August, dealing with the same topics as the BSPC Working GroupCCB. The attendees agreed that the results of the forum would feed into the reports of the workinggroup. The working group decided to hold a governmental survey among the BSPC member statesand regions to gather respective data of scientific interest.4.3 The Working Group dealt at a third digital meeting with proceduralquestions concerning the future work of the Working Group on Climate Changeand Biodiversity. The group thoroughly discussed a possible questionnaire for afact-gathering survey among the governments that would help to provide more in-depth information on the situation in the entire Baltic Sea region. Furthermore,the WG determined calls for action on the governments to promote, among others,a good ecological status of the Baltic Sea as well as a sound and sustainablestatus for its environment. More than 40 participants from the Åland Islands, theBaltic Assembly, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, the German Bundestag, Hamburg,Iceland, Kaliningrad, Karelia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,the Nordic Council, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, Schleswig-Holsteinand Sweden attended the meeting.Questionnaire and Schedule for the Planned Survey Among GovernmentsThe Working Group had previously determined to survey BSPC governments for information to feedinto the group’s work. Proposals for questions had been provided by several delegations. A scientif-ic expert had been consulted, suggesting a narrower focus on ongoing processes. The governmentsshould explain how exactly they were working to achieve their goals. Some suggestions were groupedas climate goals, biodiversity, shipping as well as explosive ordnance and plastic waste. In particular,the issue of climate law in the various BSPC member states and regions was of concern, considering arecent decision of the German Supreme Court to address future generation’s wellbeing in present-daylaws. Another concern was international cooperation, not least in support of developing countries.62 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportThe meeting determined that the questions would be reworked to concentrate on governmental ac-tions to reach the goals, both already and yet to be implemented. The deadline for a response fromthe governments was set as the end of 2021.Calls for Action by the Working GroupThe chairwoman stated that the German Bundestag’s and the Swedish delegation had submittedrecommendations for action to combat climate change and promote biodiversity. In line with theconsensus principle, the Working Group agreed on those recommendations where there was no dif-ference of opinion. These would become part of the interim report to the 30th BSPC Annual Con-ference in August 2021. Some recommendations were deemed too broad and would be reworked toseek approval in time for the mid-term report. Any recommendations left without a consensus couldbe discussed in more detail in subsequent meetings and, if unanimous consent could be reached, feedinto the calls for action of the final report.Agreement was found for calls to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; promotescience-based regional and local projects to improve and preserve marine and land-based ecosystems;gain commitment in all parts of society through information; support the development of technologyto reduce Baltic Sea eutrophication; further reduce ship emissions; and support investments in hydro-gen technologies. The need for cross-border efforts was also stressed.In the discussion, it was highlighted that the BSPC’s calls for action concerned not only membersof the European Union but also Iceland, Norway and Russia with varying goals set for e.g., climateneutrality. Discussion arose around the issue of replacing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants withrenewable resources. The matter of zero-use areas in the Baltic Sea was raised as an example recom-mendation that might find general approval, considering a recent vivid expert contribution explainingthat current such areas did not in fact limit many uses.Possible Extension of the Working Group Mandate until 2023Chairwoman Tenfjord-Toftby explained the extension of the Swedish presidency into 2022, as re-cently agreed by the Standing Committee of the BSPC. Due to the general elections in Sweden inthat year, the annual conference would be held earlier than usual and take place in June. This wouldlimit the time available for the Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity to finalise theirend report.Given the great importance of the topic, the Working Group chose to ask the Standing Committee toexpand their mandate by another year in order to achieve a higher-quality end report that would beuseful for governments, business and civil society.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 63Further MattersThe Working Group agreed on the preliminary version of its interim report to the 30th BSPC AnnualConference comprising a compilation of the WG’s work up to the present meeting, featuring thecontents of the expert presentations and the core decisions.After discussing the draft programme for the next meeting of the Working Group in October, whichwas changed to digital form again, the third meeting decided to set the spring meeting of 2022 inÅland.5. Intergovernmental SurveyThe Working Group had agreed to launch an intergovernmental survey. The questionnaire shall beanswered by the governments of the BSBC region until the end of the year 2021.6. Best Practices – ExamplesThe experts who have participated in the meetings of the working group so far have already presentedseveral best-practice examples in their presentations. In this respect, reference is made to the corre-sponding remarks on the first and second meeting and the presentations made there. It is planned togo into this in more detail in the next report of the working group.64 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report7. Political RecommendationsBased on its mandate and deliberations, the following recommendations of the Baltic Sea Parliamen-tary Conference Working Group on Climate Change and Biodiversity and its delegations have beenincorporated in the draft resolution of the digital 30th BSPC on 30 August 2021:The participants, elected representatives from the Baltic Sea Region States, assembling in digital formon 30 August 2021,call on the Governments in the Baltic Sea Region, the CBSS and the EU,Regarding Safeguarding the Baltic Sea and our Environment for Future Generations, haltingClimate Change and the Loss of Biodiversity to1. take significant steps in line with the UN Agenda 2030, the Paris Agreement and the Baltic 2030Action Plan to reduce emissions and to reach climate resilience of key economic sectors, includingindustry, transport and construction, as well as enhancement of natural carbon sinks, such as forests;2. acknowledge that global action and cross-border cooperation are needed to mitigate the effects of cli-mate change, preserve and protect biodiversity and support the implementation of the 2030 Agendafor Sustainable Development with a focus on climate (SDG13), oceans (SDG14) and biodiversity(SDG15);3. promote and financially support both regional and local projects that, based on research, aim to im-prove and preserve the marine as well as the land-based environment and ecosystems in the Baltic Seaas well as in their catchment areas;4. further involve and inform the local communities in the current situation to gain support and commit-ment in all parts of society, including businesses and civil society in long-term work to regain a goodecological status in coastal areas and beyond;5. strive for further reduction of nutrient influx into the Baltic Sea and support the development of tech-nology and innovations that will reduce the eutrophication of the Baltic Sea;6. take further actions in order to reduce ship emissions in the Baltic Sea;7. continue to support investments in green hydrogen technologies in order to reduce emissions of carbondioxide;8. cooperate and exchange information with regard to risk assessment and necessary coastal protectionmeasures due to the rising sea levels;Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 659. concerning the impacts of plastics on the environment, climate change and biodiversity, toa. consider that, due to the transboundary nature of marine litter and the particular vulnerabilityof the enclosed Baltic Sea area, prevention of plastics entering the environment by reduction ofunnecessary plastics at the source and the sustainable management of plastic waste is of mutualinterest;b. therefore, commit to support activation of the HELCOM Regional Action Plan against MarineLitter and measures contained therein, being part of the updated Baltic Sea Action Plan, at theregional level andc. support the start of negotiations on a new ambitious global agreement at UNEA 5.2 to take thenext decisive step at the international level;10. concerning the impacts of increased shipping and cruise-ship tourism on climate change and loss ofbiodiversity in the Baltic Sea, toa. recognize that the Baltic Sea is the sea with the highest shipping levels and consists of inland waterwith low water exchange;b. acknowledge that global action and cross-border cooperation are needed to mitigate the emissionsof increasing cruise-ship tourism and other shipping in the Baltic Sea;c. promote and accelerate the transition of ships and in particular cruise-ships away from fossil fuelstowards sustainable renewable fuels in order to make shipping climate-neutral, and less polluting;d. take further actions in order to reduce black carbon ship emissions in the Baltic Sea, includingsupport in technologies and infrastructure on shore power supply of harbours;e. support the development of technology and innovations that will further reduce the discharge ofwaste from ships to the Baltic Sea;f. support the prevention of introduction of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens in ballast wa-ter by supporting further development of technology and innovations and by stringent applicationof the BWM Convention and actively contributing to the experience-building phase;g. aim to improve and preserve the marine as well as the land-based environment and ecosystems inthe Baltic Sea;66 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report8. Excerpts from Statements of the Governmentsof the Baltic Sea Region to the 29th BSPCGovernments of the BSPC members have again submitted statements on the implementation of the 29thBSPC Resolution.These relate to all sections of the resolution.Since a number of demands of the 29th BSPC Resolution relate to the areas of environment, climate changeand biodiversity and their implementation is of particular importance for the activities of the WorkingGroup, the excerpts from the government statements on the 29th resolution dealing with environment,climate change and biodiversity are included in this midway report below:ÅlandPoints 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 20The Government of Åland is actively participating in developing the international EU part-financedco-operation program Interreg Central Baltic Program 2021 - 2027, which will be implemented byÅland together with the coastal regions in Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia. The focus is on in-creasing the growth and competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, promoting circularsolutions, improving the marine environment, reducing CO emissions in traffic, strengthening em-2ployment opportunities and improving public services to citizens.The Government of Åland supports the companies that have been hit hard by the consequences ofthe COVID-19 pandemic with liquidity support and special crisis measures for accommodation ac-tivities. As a result of the rapidly rising unemployment in the spring of 2020, when the relative unem-ployment rate rose to over 13% and to over 20% for people under the age of 25, the Government ofÅland has introduced measures that could quickly help affected people and companies. A temporaryincrease of labour market support and measures for individual entrepreneurs were introduced, as wellas increased employment support for companies that employ the unemployed. However, the borderrestrictions of the various countries have significantly hampered work commuting, trade and othercross-border exchanges.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 67DenmarkSafeguarding our Environment, Seas and Oceans for Future GenerationsProtecting marine biodiversity is a key priority for Denmark, and the work under the Helsinki con-vention is important to reach common goals for improvements of the Baltic Sea environment. Den-mark has taken initiative to designate new protected marine areas, for the first time including strictlyprotected areas in the Danish part of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, as an implementation of theEU marine strategy framework directive, as well as new marine special protection areas under the EUbird directive to protect sea birds. Management is planned to ensure conservation of biotopes andspecies within the sites. Denmark is also in the process of developing new Natura 2000 managementplans in 2021 for all Natura 2000 sites, including marine Natura 2000 sites also designated as HEL-COM MPAs. Finally, restoration of two stone reefs are planned within the HELCOM area.Denmark remains committed to reducing the input of nutrients to the Baltic Sea, by addressing allrelevant sources of nutrient input. Denmark plans to adopt 3rd generation River Basin ManagementPlans in 2021, setting ambitious targets for nutrient input reduction. The proposed revision of theBaltic Sea Action Plan, set to be adopted in October 2021, contains measures targeting agriculturalrun-off, point sources incl. wastewater treatment plants, atmospheric emissions and nutrient recy-cling. Denmark has implemented HELCOM’s Maximum Allowable Inputs (MAI) on nutrients inour national marine strategy as environmental targets on eutrophication. Denmark has also adopteda prohibition against fertilizing in areas (habitat types) protected by the Nature Protection Act § 3.Furthermore, Denmark has implemented the decision of IMO to establish the Baltic Sea area as anemission control area (NECA), resulting in increased demands for NOx emission reductions fromshipping.Denmark has implemented the Espoo Convention in the Danish Environmental Assessment Act(EAA), which covers plans, programs as well as projects. The EAA also transposes the EU DirectivesEIA and SEA and their provisions concerning the assessment of transboundary impacts on the envi-ronment.The EAA sets the procedural guidelines for conducting consultations and assessing transboundaryimpacts on the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency has been appointed Point ofContact in accordance with the Espoo Convention and the SEA Protocol to the Convention. TheDepartment of the Ministry of Environment is appointed Focal Point for Administrative Matters inaccordance with the Espoo Convention and the SEA Protocol to the Convention.Denmark fully supports the process for achieving good environmental conditions in the Baltic Sea.Danish participation in HELCOM is led by the Ministry of Environment in good cooperation withthe Ministry of Defence. Denmark welcomes the work on an updated and ambitious Baltic Sea Ac-tion Plan (BSAP). Denmark is participating actively in the negotiations of the update of the Baltic SeaAction Plan and is looking forward to participate in the Ministerial Meeting in October 2021. Thereduction of nutrient inputs is one of the cornerstones of the HELCOM work and for Denmark, itis important that all contracting parties commit to achieving, the goals and targets of the HELCOMnutrient reduction scheme.68 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportEstoniaRegarding safeguarding the environment and the Baltic Sea strategic cooperation, the EstonianResearch Council and the Estonian Ministry of the Environment support research and innovationto identify, protect and monitor marine biodiversity. This has been achieved by developing novelmethods and tools to close knowledge gaps and advance marine conservation science within theframework of the RITA programme, Interreg Baltic Sea Programme and Joint Programming Initiative(JPI) Oceans.Atmospheric nitrogen deposition resulting from combustion of marine fuels is one of the contributorsto the high nitrogen concentrations in the Baltic Sea. The Baltic States have been jointly developingmeasures to control and prevent pollution from ships, such as designating the Baltic Sea as a SOxemission control area. In order to reduce risks of alien species entering the Baltic Sea through ballastwater exchange, the HELCOM countries have agreed to ratify the International Ballast Water Man-agement Convention. In Estonia, the Convention will take effect by 2023 at the latest, requiringIMO-registered passenger ships to clean their ballast water.The primary sources of nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea originate from diffuse sources, mainly agricul-ture, and therefore the most important current measures are laid down in the river basin managementplans, which aim to reduce loading from the catchment area. However, the current measures aloneare not adequate for achieving the set objectives. This is why reduction of nutrient inputs into theBaltic Sea is additionally addressed in the Estonian Programme of Measures of the Estonian MarineStrategy. The general purpose of the programme of measures is to reduce human-induced pressureson the marine environment and to improve its environmental status.In Estonia, major projects that are likely to have a significant adverse environmental impact acrossboundaries have always been considered both under relevant international treaties as well as the Espooand Helsinki conventions. In 2020, Estonia has informed its neighbouring countries regarding thetransboundary strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedure concerning the Estonian mari-time spatial planning process as well as the Saare Wind Energy OÜ offshore windfarm project on thewest coast of the Saare County. Estonia has also expressed its interest to participate in the SEA proce-dure regarding the Programme of Measures of the Finnish Marine Strategy 2022-2027.Estonia acknowledges that the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) is the main tool used by HELCOMto achieve the common goal of restoring the good ecological status of the Baltic Sea marine environ-ment. Implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan has contributed to significant environmentalimprovement in the status of the Baltic Sea. However, all of the goals of the BSAP have not beenachieved, and the Baltic Sea is still heavily affected by multiple anthropogenic pressures. Analysing themain reasons for not achieving the objectives of the previous BSAP will become a key to successfulimplementation of the updated BSAP. Strong regional cooperation is necessary to meeting these chal-lenges. Estonia will continue to promote and implement measures to support more resilient marineecosystems, while increasing the efforts to complete the already agreed actions.Estonia acknowledges that ammunition dumped at sea as well as wrecks and ghost nets constitute anenvironmental and safety issue in the Baltic Sea. These problems being of a large-scale, widespread andtransboundary character, they require a joint approach by the Baltic Sea states. The issue of dumpedClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 69munitions is addressed within the HELCOM group on Environmental Risks of Hazardous SubmergedObjects. The problem of ghost nets will be addressed in the Revised HELCOM Regional Action Planon Marine Litter as well as in the updated programme of measures of the Estonian Marine Strategy.German Federal GovernmentRegarding Safeguarding our Environment, Seas and Oceans for Future Generations, to10. continue to support innovation as regards conservation and the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea in orderto protect marine biodiversity;Achieving and developing the coherence of the HELCOM network of Marine Protected Areas(MPAs), in combination with effective MPA management, is intended to help improve the protectionof marine biodiversity. This is flanked by efforts and measures to protect threatened species and habi-tats in the Baltic Sea, for example to improve the health of Baltic subpopulations of harbour porpoise,reintroduce the sturgeon and map the migration routes of birds in the region.International cooperation on marine spatial planning likewise makes an important contribution tothe preservation, protection and improvement of the marine environment, including its resilience tothe effects of climate change, as well as contributing to the sustainable development of the Baltic Searegion. According to the European Marine Spatial Planning Directive (2014/89/EU), the sustainabledevelopment of the seas is to be supported by means of an ecosystem-based approach. Taking theecosystem-based approach is intended to ensure that use of the seas is limited to an extent compatiblewith achieving good environmental status as defined in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive(2008/56/EC).11. continue to recognise the Baltic Sea as international waters, with freedom of navigation and concerningthe protection of the environment;The German Government points out that the Baltic Sea does not consist entirely of “internationalwaters”, all of its coastal states having delineated the boundaries of and between their territorial seasin accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982. The GermanGovernment champions the universal validity of UNCLOS and its principles, which include freedomof navigation and the protection and preservation of the marine environment.12. continue and enhance national and international efforts to reduce emissions of nutrients to the BalticSea;Given its particular natural characteristics as a semi-enclosed sea with low water exchange and deepbasins, eutrophication as a result of excessive nutrient inflow, chiefly from agriculture, is a majorproblem for the ecosystems of the Baltic Sea. As eight of the nine Baltic Sea states are member statesof the EU, they share the legal obligations regarding nutrient emissions enshrined in the NitratesDirective (91/676/EEC) and the Water and Marine Strategy Framework Directives (2000/60/ECand 2008/56/EC). Germany’s national action prompted by these directives includes the revision of70 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportits Fertiliser Application Ordinance (Düngeverordnung) as well as specific measures to transpose theWater and Marine Strategy Framework Directives into law. Germany has made combating eutroph-ication one of the priorities of its current HELCOM Chairmanship. It is a priority to further reducethe excessive nutrient pollution of the Baltic Sea. Possible ways to cut nutrient emissions are to be de-veloped by, for example, analysing the obstacles to implementation, updating the record on nutrienthotspots and considering tailored local approaches.Counter to the ambitions of some Baltic Sea states, the German Government is in favour of robustregulation of marine geoengineering activities. End-of-pipe solutions must be accorded only second-ary importance compared to measures to reduce and avoid nutrient emissions.Greater collaboration is also being sought with partners, i.e. interest groups in the scientific com-munity and elsewhere, in pursuit of the HELCOM targets. The intention is to deploy integratedsolutions to counteract the growing and ever more complex effects of human activity on the marineenvironment, and to establish stronger connections – and, consequently, a better balance – betweenthe interests of exploitation and protection.13. ensure continuous monitoring and analysis of the state of the Baltic Sea ecosystem in line with the re-quirements of the Espoo Convention and again reaffirm that large scale projects that have a major impacton ecosystems in the Baltic Sea region have to comply with the obligations arising from relevant internation-al treaties and conventions, including the Espoo Convention and the Helsinki Convention;An instrument of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), the Espoo Convention ensuresthat the affected states and the general public in those countries are involved in corporate environ-mental procedures (environmental impact assessments) pertaining to projects in other states thatare likely to have a significant environmental impact across boundaries. This reciprocal involvementin industrial projects is especially important for the states of the Baltic Sea region and is, as a rule,implemented correctly and fruitfully. To improve cooperation among the Baltic Sea states, regularinformal communication takes place between all their national Espoo points of contact. The dialoguewas conducted in a virtual format this year. When it comes to major projects that affect the coastsand coastal areas, particular attention is paid to fulfilment of the obligations arising from the EspooConvention. The German Government is in close contact with the authorities responsible for thetechnical implementation of the individual projects.14. support that the HELCOM Chairmanship – also in light of the socio-political and economic conse-quences of the COVID-19 pandemic – pursues the objectives of explicitly considering aspects of sustainabil-ity, relevance for the climate and biodiversity as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea ActionPlan and future HELCOM decisions and – in accordance with the calls for action of the BSPC – not onlyto update the Baltic Sea Action Plan but also to visibly accelerate and intensify its implementation, to worktogether to the best of all abilities to further reduce the excessive nutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well asto strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021;The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt in almost all areas of life since mid-March 2020. All over the world, forces have been combined to fight the pandemic.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 71At the same time, we are still facing all the other challenges like global warming, the destruction ofour natural environment and marine pollution. The sustainable economic recovery we need in thecoming months therefore has to include progress on protecting the environment – meaning themarine environment too. Germany’s HELCOM Chairmanship from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2022 iscampaigning for this and seeks to generate useful impetus for sustainability, relevance to the climateand biodiversity.It is furthermore intended that the indispensable and science-based work on fundamentals at HEL-COM will continue under the German Chairmanship. The priority is to conclude an ambitiousreview of the Baltic Sea Action Plan and to expedite its implementation to reduce the nutrient load inthe Baltic Sea. There are also plans to analyse the obstacles to implementation, update the record onnutrient hotspots and investigate tailored local approaches in order to develop options for reducingnutrient emissions.HamburgRegarding Safeguarding our Environment, Seas and Oceans for Future Generations: With regard to para-graphs 10 – 15:Hamburg works together with its partners in the Federal Government and Länder Working Group onthe North and Baltic Seas (BLANO) to implement the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (Docu-ment 22/1694). The national programme of measures for the North and Baltic Seas is currently beingupdated. A main focus, supported by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is improving marineprotection and sustainable use of the seas.The Senate welcomes the active role of the German Federal Minister as the current chairwoman ofHELCOM and the great commitment of the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conser-vation and Nuclear Safety in the HELCOM working bodies.The Senate supports the Federal Government in the priorities it has set for achieving its climate targetsand for the protection of the Baltic Sea in respect of:· reducing the pollution of the Baltic Sea with nutrients and maritime waste· reworking the Baltic Sea Action Plan to take account of regionally important core topics by2021 at the latest· including global developments such as the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goal 14(Oceans)72 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportLatviaMarine Spatial Planning10. continue to support innovation as regards conservation and the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea in order to protectmarine biodiversity;11. continue to recognise the Baltic Sea as international waters, with freedom of navigation and concerning the pro-tection of the environment;Partly:13. ensure continuous monitoring and analysis of the state of the Baltic Sea ecosystem in line with the requirements ofthe Espoo Convention and again reaffirm that large scale projects that have a major impact on ecosystems in the BalticSea region have to comply with the obligations arising from relevant international treaties and conventions, includingthe Espoo Convention and the Helsinki Convention;14. support that the HELCOM chairmanship – also in light of the socio-political and economic consequences ofthe COVID-19 pandemic – pursues the objectives of explicitly considering aspects of sustainability, relevance for theclimate and biodiversity as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea Action Plan and future HELCOMdecisions and - in accordance with the calls for action of the BSPC - not only to update the Baltic Sea Action Plan butalso to visibly accelerate and intensify its implementation, to work together to the best of all abilities to further reducethe excessive nutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well as to strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021.The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia incooperation with the VASAB Secretariat is co-hosting an important regional conference dedicatedto Maritime Spatial Planning (hereafter - MSP) – the 4th Baltic Maritime Spatial Planning Forum(hereafter - Baltic MSP Forum).Already for the 4th time, the Baltic MSP Forum is organised to bring together the MSP communityfrom the Baltic Sea Region (hereafter - BSR) and beyond to discuss, share, learn and develop new ide-as to enhance MSP in the region. This year, the Baltic MSP Forum is organised by two Interreg BSRprojects – Capacity4MSP and Land-Sea-Act – and it serves as a final conference for both projects.31 March 2021 marks an important target date of Directive 2014/89/EU on establishing a frame-work for MSP, meaning that maritime spatial plans need to be established by this date by all EUMember States. And that is why the 4th Baltic MSP Forum comes along with the slogan “DeliveringMSP – Interactions and Capacities Across All Levels”; when all countries in the BSR are on track withmaritime spatial plans and are stepping into the plan implementation phase, the consequent questionarises – what is next? MSP is not ultimate or universal, although it is based on anecosystem approach(achievement of a good environmental status) and the interplay of existing and new marine and coast-al uses. MSP is one of the essential components of the Blue growth strategy and obviously will needto align with the EU Green Deal and its overarching aim of climate neutrality in Europe by 2050.This year, the Baltic MSP Forum will include important topics and invite prominent experts topresent their experience and discuss results on stakeholder involvement in MSP, multi-use and theClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 73Blue economy, data-driven decision making in MSP, land-sea interactions, multi-level governance,ecosystem-based approach guidelines to maritime cultural heritage and, last but not least, climatechange and MSP.The 4th Baltic MSP Forum will take place on 1 and 2 June 2021, more information available at http://www.balticmspforum.eu/.Environmental Protection10. continue to support innovation as regards conservation and the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea in order to protectmarine biodiversity;14. support that the HELCOM chairmanship – also in light of the socio-political and economic consequences ofthe COVID-19 pandemic – pursues the objectives of explicitly considering aspects of sustainability, relevance for theclimate and biodiversity as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea Action Plan and future HELCOMdecisions and - in accordance with the calls for action of the BSPC - not only to update the Baltic Sea Action Plan butalso to visibly accelerate and intensify its implementation, to work together to the best of all abilities to further reducethe excessive nutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well as to strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021.President of Latvia Egils Levits joined other leaders at the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity in Septem-.ber 2020 in endorsing the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature2 sending a united signal to step up global ambition andencourage others to match their collective ambition for nature, climate, and people with the scale of the crisisat hand.The overview of the mapping3results (the distribution and condition) of the habitats protected under the EUHabitats Directive (including seacoast habitats) in Latvia is planned at the end of 2021.To define justified conservation status of protected habitats and a contribute to comprehensive managementsystem of marine protected areas in Latvia is the aim ofthe EU LIFE project “Research of marine protected habitats in EEZ and determination of the necessaryconservation status in Latvia”4(2020 - 2025).The seal management plan was approved for three species of seals in the Baltic Sea and Latvian marine waters(territorial and EEZ) on 18 February 2021. The plan suggests a feasibility study that is also being conductedto link the platform to the Enterprise registers and other national registers in Latvia and Lithuania that will beused in the KYC process.Ministers of the Baltic countries and Poland have signed a memorandum of intent on cooperation in the devel-opment of 5G connectivity and connected automated mobility in the North Sea-Baltic Corridor.2 https://www.leaderspledgefornature.org/3 https://www.skaitamdabu.gov.lv/public/eng/4 https://reef.daba.gov.lv/public/eng/74 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportLatvia is currently working on improvement of the national e-health system “E-veselībai” to ensure that thesystem can be used for cross-border health data exchange. It is planned to implement the cross-border exchangeof the Patient Summary and ePrescription/eDispensation information with at least three EU Member States by30 April 2023. One of the current tasks for the Latvian authorities is to develop the necessary technical solutionsthat will link the national e-health system to the joint EU gateway (OpenNCP).On 15 October 2020 the Baltic countries presented a joint view on the digital transformation of the EU at thehigh-level telecommunication ministers meeting.LithuaniaRegarding Safeguarding our Environment, Seas and Oceans for Future Generations, to12. continue and enhance national and international efforts to reduce emissions of nutrients to the BalticSea:1) Development of a methodology for drawing up fertilization plans (a unified methodology fordrawing up fertilization plans will be developed, fertilization rates will be set according to thecultivated crops and soil);2) Development of the fertilization planning and use of fertilizers accounting subsystem of theapplication acceptance information system (developed to declare the used organic and min-eral fertilizers by fields for better knowledge of where and how much fertilizer is used). Thesubsystem is important in the application of measures and the modelling of pollution and itsmanagement;3) Integration of fertilization plan methodology into the subsystem (fertilization planning on-line, reports, remote control options).The first 2 projects are currently being implemented and are scheduled for completion in the 3rd quar-ter of 2021, the 3rd until the end of 2022.The information system will be administrated by the State Enterprise Agricultural Information andRural Business Centre under the Ministry of Agriculture. The projects are important for the optimal,sustainable use of fertilizers to reduce the input of excess nutrients into surface water bodies and theBaltic Sea. However, legal requirements for the provision of data using this IT platform and the de-velopment of fertilization plans have to be approved.1) A pilot project to evaluate the possibilities of removing excessive nutrients from the waterusing mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) farming in the Curonian Lagoon.2) Pilot project for the collection of phytoplankton biomass in the Curonian Lagoon withthe purpose to reduce eutrophication using floating crafts and bioreactors for agrotechnologi-cal needs or other purposes.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 753) Project to assess the impact of biological processes (nitrogen fixation, denitrification andcyanotoxin production) on the balance of nutrients in the Curonian Lagoon and nutrientinputs to the Baltic Sea.13. ensure continuous monitoring and analysis of the state of the Baltic Sea ecosystem in line with the re-quirements of the Espoo Convention and again reaffirm that large scale projects that have a major impacton ecosystems in the Baltic Sea region have to comply with the obligations arising from relevant internation-al treaties and conventions, including the Espoo Convention and the Helsinki Convention:Update of the Baltic Sea Environmental Monitoring Programme with the requirements to:4) assess wintering seabirds in the Lithuanian open marine waters in a coordinated way at theregional level to assess seabird abundance and distribution throughout all the Baltic Sea:5) monitor non-native and invasive species in the Baltic Sea in accordance with HELCOM andEU Regulation No 1143/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October2014 on the prevention and management of the introduction and spread of invasive alien species;6) monitor reefs habitats (1170) of the NATURA 2000 network;7) monitor marine litter in the Baltic Sea and evaluate the quantities, sources, nature and otherrelevant characteristics;8) monitor underwater noise level in Lithuanian marine waters to assess the state of the marineenvironment in relation to the good environmental status criteria;9) monitor fish communities in accordance with HELCOM standards.14. support that the HELCOM chairmanship – also in light of the socio-political and economic conse-quences of the COVID-19 pandemic – pursues the objectives of explicitly considering aspects of sustainabil-ity, relevance for the climate and biodiversity as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea ActionPlan and future HELCOM decisions and - in accordance with the calls for action of the BSPC - not onlyto update the Baltic Sea Action Plan but also to visibly accelerate and intensify its implementation, to worktogether to the best of all abilities to further reduce the excessive nutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well asto strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021:Lithuania is actively participating in the HELCOM BSAP updating process. The BSAP project wasnationally coordinated with stakeholders and society. Appropriate measures of the updated BSAP willbe integrated into national water-sector strategic documents.76 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportMecklenburg–VorpommernStatement by the Government of Mecklenburg-VorpommernthRegarding the Implementation of the Resolution Adopted by the 29 Baltic Sea ParliamentaryConference (Online, 24 August 2020)In the following statement, the Government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern reports on the implemen-thtation status of the resolution adopted by the 29 Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference, which tookplace on 24 August 2020 in a digital format due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Herewith the Government fulfils the request of the Landtag to submit the respective report by 31March 2021.The statement only covers those areas which are within the competence of the State Government orare viewed to possess overriding importance for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.Regarding Safeguarding our Environment, Seas and Oceans for Future Generations, to10. continue to support innovation as regards conservation and the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea in orderto protect marine biodiversity;The Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) and the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)aim at the preservation and sustainable use of the Baltic Sea marine resources. Mecklenburg-Vorpom-mern stands by the Federal Government in achieving these goals and supports innovative, effectiveand efficient approaches.11. continue to recognise the Baltic Sea as international waters, with freedom of navigation and concerningthe protection of the environment;The Baltic Sea is much more than an international sea with freedom of navigation and environmentalprotection provisions. The reconciliation of the economic use of the sea, e.g. in the form of offshorewind-parks, cables and pipelines, fisheries and aquaculture, tourism and leisure as well as raw ma-terials extraction, with the requirements of nature and coastal protection requires the coordinationof these various exploitation demands by means of Maritime Spatial Planning. Relevant activities inthis specific area are currently focussed on the coordination of national maritime spatial plans of theBaltic Sea states, which should ultimately form a coherent planning framework for the Baltic Sea area.12. continue and enhance national and international efforts to reduce emissions of nutrients to the BalticSea;The Government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern welcomes this demand. Current efforts are success-fully reflected in the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive, the EU MarineStrategy Framework Directive (MSFD) as well as HELCOM’s Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) and itsupdate process.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 7714. support that the HELCOM chairmanship – also in light of the socio-political and economic conse-quences of the COVID-19 pandemic – pursues the objectives of explicitly considering aspects of sustainabil-ity, relevance for the climate and biodiversity as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea ActionPlan and future HELCOM decisions and - in accordance with the calls for action of the BSPC - not onlyto update the Baltic Sea Action Plan but also to visibly accelerate and intensify its implementation, to worktogether to the best of all abilities to further reduce the excessive nutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well asto strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021;The relevant competences lie with the Federal authorities representing Germany at HELCOM. Meck-lenburg-Vorpommern actively supports the Federal authorities in the implementation of the statedchairmanship priorities. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern plans the designation of Natura 2000 sites asHELCOM MPAs in consultation with coastal protection and spatial planning authorities.15. acknowledging the priorities of Germany’s HELCOM Chairmanship to intensify efforts to monitor andto treat the problem of dumped munitions, wrecks and ghost nets in the Baltic Sea on a common interna-tional approach supporting the existing national and international efforts and responsibilities, moreover tostrengthen existing political structures and scientific projects, also thus to make the Baltic Sea region becomea global leader in the field of solving problems associated with dumped munitions and unexploded ordnancelocated underwater as well as in the field of wrecks and ghost nets.Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has been part of the “Expert Network Munitions in the Sea” of the jointBund-Länder Working Group North and Baltic Sea since its founding meeting in February 2012.The members of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment, the Ministry of the Interior andEurope as well as the Munitions Extraction Service Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Munitionsbergungs-dienst Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, MBD MV) represent the Federal State at the relevant meetings.The MBD MV also provides expert consultations on the threat of unexploded ordnance for NGOsorganising the extraction of ghost nets.Extensive research conducted since 2017 has delivered comprehensive data on coastal military exer-cise locations and thus supplements the documentation of marine areas, which have been increasinglyused for firing practice since 1871. This research revealed that duds from shooting practice couldpotentially be dispersed over a more than 15,000 km2area stretching far beyond the coastal waters ofMecklenburg-Vorpommern.In addition, the Munitions Extraction Service Mecklenburg-Vorpommern participates in other re-search projects as an associated partner or consulting body (e.g. within the framework of the DAI-MON project). To this end, direct contacts with the BSPC Rapporteur on Sea-Dumped Munitionshave also taken place.78 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportNorwaySafeguarding the environment, seas and oceansThe oceans link humanity together, and we depend on them for food, jobs and energy. However, theoceans are in trouble. Collectively, we need to mitigate climate change, halt the loss of biodiversityand increase the resilience of our marine ecosystems. The Atlantic, North and Baltic seas are all inter-connected, and we must continue to work together to address the challenges.The emphasis and priorities of the of BSPC are in line with Norwegian priorities and are reflectedin our participation in and support of, among others, OSPAR, IMO and the High-level Panel fora Sustainable Ocean Economy. The High-level Panel is now working on areas of transformation tosafeguard ocean health and wealth for generations to come. We welcome the BSPC’s emphasis on themarine environment, with the ultimate aim of sustainably managing 100% of the seas and oceans.The OSPAR Ministerial Meeting this year will also set the course for crucial work that needs to bedone during this decade, and many of the Baltic Sea Region countries are important contractingparties to the OSPAR Convention.Marine plastic litter is one of the fastest growing environmental concerns of our time, and there is aneed for a new global agreement. In 2019, based on a Norwegian proposal, the Nordic Ministers ofEnvironment issued a declaration calling for such an agreement. Norway has also put forward pro-posals to strengthen existing mechanisms, as for instance the action plan under the IMO and strictercontrol of the plastic waste trade under the Basel Convention. Norway is also continuing its develop-ment aid programme of USD 200 million over the next four years to combat marine plastic litter andour contribution to the World Bank Fund PROBLUE. However, we recognise that multiple stressorsin fact affect the marine environment and that other land-based pollution, such as sewage and agricul-tural run-off, are more pressing issues in some places, as we understand is the case for the Baltic Sea.Norway also attaches great importance to innovation and green shipping as a means of reducinggreenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, the Government published its action plan for green shipping,which sets out the aim of reducing emissions from domestic shipping and fisheries by half by 2030and promotes the development of low- and zero-emission solutions for all vessel categories. Encour-aging the development of autonomous vessels is an integral part of the plan, as digitalisation andautomated processes can lead to safer and more environmentally friendly production. The Govern-ment has therefore allocated NOK 15 million to strengthen digital competence in ocean industries.Norway is also supporting the transition to green shipping in developing countries by contributingNOK 50 million to the IMO-led project Green Voyage 2050.The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides the primary legal framework for all ocean activ-ities. Norway places great emphasis on following up international treaties and conventions related tooceans and marine areas, such as the Espoo Convention and the Helsinki Convention.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 79PolandInformation on activities carried out by Polish institutionsin order to implement the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) Resolution Adopted byththe Digital 29 BSPC on 24 August 2020Reduction of nutrients in the Baltic SeaThe resolution of the Conference adopted by the 29th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (CBSS)on-line on August 24, 2020 calls on the governments of the Baltic Sea countries, the Council of theBaltic Sea States (CBSS) and the European Union (EU) on environmental protection, seas and oceansto continue and strengthen national and international efforts to reduce nutrient emissions to theBaltic Sea. Taking into account the achievement of sustainable development, climate and biodiversityobjectives and the relevance of updating the Baltic Sea Action Plan, not only should the Baltic ActionPlan be updated, but also its implementation should be accelerated and intensified in order to furtherreduce the marine nutrient overload in the Baltic Sea.Water eutrophication occurs when there is too much of the so-called nutrient nutrients (nitrogen andphosphorus compounds). They go to the Baltic Sea, among others as a result of agricultural activities(e.g. from too much fertilizer applied in the fields and from inadequately stored animal excrements),from municipal and industrial wastewater and from atmospheric deposition.Agriculture is responsible to a great extent for eutrophication, i.e. the negative effects of water nutri-tion. As much as 50 percent of all nutrients that end up in the sea come from land cultivation or ani-mal husbandry. The waters of lakes and rivers are characterized by a significant degree of advancementof the eutrophication process, and the Polish coastal zone of the Baltic Sea has a very high load as well.The management of nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus, is one of the most important factorsdetermining the production results of a farm and its impact on the environment. The strategy of waterprotection against nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from agricultural sources should be based onthe implementation of a management system for these components in farms adapted to national con-ditions. Therefore, there is a need to popularize a modern approach to the management of nutrientsamong farmers. Some regulations on reducing water pollution with nitrates from agricultural sourcesand preventing further pollution are included in the Water Law of July 20, 2017 (Journal of Laws of2021, item 624). The Act of 2017 changed the manner of implementation of the Council Directiveof December 12, 1991 91/676 / EEC on the protection of waters against pollution caused by nitratesfrom agricultural sources in Poland, and provided a legal basis for the implementation of the Regula-tion of the Council of Ministers of 5 June 2018, the so-called Nitrate Action Program.In order to improve the country’s water and sewage management, the municipal sewage collectionand treatment system is being developed. This is manifested by the commissioning of new wastewatertreatment plants, modernization of the existing wastewater treatment plants, in particular with regardto the removal of biogenic compounds from wastewater, as well as the expansion of the water supplyand sewage system, and shutting down obsolete and ineffective facilities. The effect of these activities80 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportis an increase in the total amount of wastewater treated (including an increase in treatment with in-creased removal of nutrients). Despite this, there was an increase in the amount of untreated sewage,which could have been caused by possible failures of the water and sewage infrastructure and the stillinsufficient length of the sewage network.Air monitoring is used to assess the deposition of pollutants to the substrate and the air quality.Precipitation accumulates and transports pollutants, thus affecting ecosystems through, inter alia,eutrophication processes, soil and water acidification. These processes are related to the presence ofsubstances in the air, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ammonia and their deposition - alongwith precipitation - to the ground.Activities within the scope of the Ministry of Economic Development, Labor and Technology proper-ties support the activities of the European Commission in the field of limiting the release of nutrientsinto the environment through changes in EU legislation. A representative of the Ministry participatedin the work on Regulation (EU) No 259/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14March 2012 amending Regulation (EC) No 648/2004 as regards the use of phosphates and otherphosphorus compounds in detergents for consumers, laundry and automatic dishwashing detergentsfor consumers. The aim of the regulation is to reduce the impact of phosphates from detergents on therisk of eutrophication and to reduce the cost of phosphate disposal in waste water treatment plants.The restriction for consumer laundry detergents was applied from 30 June 2013 and for automaticdishwashers from 1 January 2017.Protection of the Baltic Sea biodiversity, problem of dumped munitions, wrecks and ghost nets in the BalticSeaParticipation in the work of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) and theSub-Committee on Pollution Prevention and Response (PPR) of the International Maritime Organ-isation (IMO). The following issues were discussed:- greenhouse gas emissions and implementation of the IMO Preliminary Greenhouse Gas Strat-egy;- amendments to MARPOL Annex VI on the procedures for sampling and verification of thesulphur content of oil fuel and the design energy efficiency index EEDI;- amendments to the BWM Convention concerning the testing of ballast water handling sys-tems in connection with their commissioning;- draft amendments to Annexes 1 and 4 to the AFS Convention.Participation in the European Sustainable Shipping Forum (ESSF) working group on ship waste. Themain topic of the meetings was the implementation of Directive (EU) 2019/883 of the EuropeanParliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on port reception facilities for the delivery of wastefrom ships, amending Directive 2010/65/EU and repealing Directive 2000/59/EC and the review ofClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 81Directive 2005/35/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on ship-source pollution and on the introduction of penalties for infringements.Undertaking the legislative work on the Act on Port reception facilities for ship waste, implementingDirective (EU) 2019/883 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on portreception facilities for ship waste, amending Directive 2010/65/EU and repealing Directive 2000/59/EC.Among other things, the draft Act provides for an extension of the definition of ‘ship waste’ to coverall waste generated on board ships. It also requires ports and marinas to maintain adequate receptionfacilities, collect waste from ships and issue a receipt. The legislation provides for the obligation ofseaports and harbours to prepare waste reception plans, the obligation to submit biennial reports andother information obligations. The draft Act implements the rules for charging for the collection ofwaste from ships provided for in the Directive.Following the ratification of the International Convention for the Control and Management of ShipsBallast Water & Sediments, which aims to prevent, reduce and as far as possible eliminate the transferof alien species and pathogens by ships through the control and management of ballast water andsediments, draft regulations of the Minister of Infrastructure have been prepared on the followingmatters:- transmission of information on the current ballast water quantities and ballast operations car-ried out on a ship bound for a port located in the territory of the Republic of Poland- application template for granting a ship travelling between certain ports or places or a ship op-erating exclusively between certain ports or places exemption as referred to in regulation A-4 ofthe Annex to the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships BallastWater & Sediments, 2004, signed on 13 February 2004 in London- equivalent arrangements to those required under the International Convention for the Controland Management of Ships Ballast Water & Sediments, 2004, signed on 13 February 2004 inLondon, for ships listed in regulation A-5 of the Annex to that Convention- cooperation in the framework of activities carried out by the Baltic Marine Environment Pro-tection Commission (Helsinki Commission/HELCOM) in order to fulfil the legal obligationsconcerning the protection of the marine environment of the Baltic Sea. HELCOM’s work iscarried out in 8 working groups and a number of expert, correspondence, project and ad hocgroups to make full use of the experts’ potential and focus on the overarching goal of achievinggood environmental status of the Baltic Sea.- The work of the Helsinki Commission has been recently focused mainly on the update of theBaltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), which is to take place in 2021. The activities of the Polish rep-resentatives concentrated on providing reporting data, developing documents and analyses, aswell as ensuring participation of experts and representatives of relevant ministries and scientificcommunities in meetings of HELCOM working groups, both permanent and ad hoc, and inall new initiatives of this forum.82 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report- legislative work on the Order No. 150 of the Prime Minister of 25 September 2020 on theappointment of the Inter-Ministerial Team on the risks arising from hazardous materials de-posited in the maritime areas of the Republic of Poland. The task of the team will be to assessthe risks associated with the occurrence of hazards arising from hazardous materials depositedin the maritime areas of the Republic of Poland, including the preparation and presentation forapproval by the Council of Ministers of a detailed action plan of public administration and thesupervised and subordinate units on the subject of toxic warfare agents and their degradationproducts deposited in the maritime areas of the Republic of Poland, conventional weapons andfuel and petroleum substances deposited in wrecks, together with the identification of entitiesresponsible for carrying out the tasks, the schedule of implementation of these tasks and theexpected financial outlays for their implementation.The General Director for Environmental Protection is the competent authority for coordinating theenvironmental impact assessment procedures in a transboundary context in Poland. International co-operation in this field is conducted pursuant to the provisions of the Convention on EnvironmentalImpact Assessments in a Transboundary Context, implemented at Espoo on 25 February 1991 (here-inafter referred to as the Espoo Convention) and the Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessmentto the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, implementedat Kiev on 21 May 2003 (hereinafter: the SEA Protocol).Point 13 of the Resolution of the 29th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) refers to “ensurecontinuous monitoring and analysis of the state of the Baltic Sea ecosystem in line with the require-ments of the Espoo Convention and again reaffirm that large scale projects that have a major impacton ecosystems in the Baltic Sea region have to comply with the obligations arising from relevantinternational treaties and conventions, including the Espoo Convention”.It should be borne in mind that the Espoo Convention does not contain legal regulations as regardscontinuous monitoring of the environment and ecosystems, but obliges the states to carry out anenvironmental impact assessment in a transboundary context for projects that can have a significantimpact on the territory of another state.The General Director for Environmental Protection coordinated, inter alia, transboundary proce-dures for such large-scale projects in the Baltic Sea as the Baltic Pipe (a project implemented in theterritory of Poland, Denmark and Sweden) and Nord Stream I and II (a project implemented inGermany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Russia). For both investment projects, transboundary pro-cedures were carried out pursuant to the provisions of the Espoo Convention, participated in by thePolish authorities and the public.What should also be stressed in the context of ensuring the sustainable development of the BalticSea ecosystem, is the important role of strategic environmental impact assessments (SEA) carried outfor maritime spatial development plans in the Baltic Sea. The SEA allows assessing both positive andnegative environmental impacts, including cumulative impacts, and planning appropriate remedialsolutions. The impacts analysed under the SEA are assessed in the context of the entire Baltic Seaecosystem by analysing, e.g. the impact on the integrity and cohesion of Natura 2000 sites.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 83Where a possibility of significant impacts on the territory of other states is found, these states arenotified and given an opportunity to give an opinion on documents under the SEA. The legal basisgoverning the implementation of the SEA in a transboundary context is the SEA Protocol. MostBaltic States, including Poland, carried out the SEA for the maritime spatial development plans beingdeveloped, involving the authorities and society of other Baltic States in the process of giving opinionson the draft plan.RussiaON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE29th BALTIC SEA PARLIAMENTARY CONFERENCE RESOLUTION(Information of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)In the period from September 2020 to April 2021, at the initiative of Russia and with Russian partic-ipation, diverse work was carried out in line with the provisions of the resolution of the 29th Baltic SeaParliamentary Conference (BSPC), held in digital format on August 24, 2020.To paragraph 14 of the ResolutionAs part of the celebration of the Baltic Sea Day, HELCOM in 1986, the XXI International Environmen-tal Forum “Baltic Sea Day”was held in St. Petersburg on March 23-24 this year in a full-time format.During the event organized with the support of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia, the Gov-ernments of St. Petersburg, Russian and foreign government representatives, scientists and expertsdiscussed topical issues of updating the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan and revising its goals until2030, as well as project activities in the region, including cross-border cooperation and the Interregprogram for the Baltic Sea region.84 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportSchleswig-HolsteinthState Government report on the state of implementation of the 29 BSPC resolutionOn the conservation of our environment, seas and oceans (paragraphs 10-15):10. continue to support innovation as regards conservation and the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea in orderto protect marine biodiversity;Schleswig-Holstein supports all measures necessary to achieve the objectives of relevant legal require-ments. This concerns in particular the achievement of the good environmental status of the Baltic Seain accordance with the EU Maritime Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), taking into account thecorresponding HELCOM objectives and agreements. In this context, Schleswig-Holstein is activelyinvolved in the development and implementation of a joint program of measures of the federal andstate governments, which was set up in 2016. This program is currently under review with the aim ofreporting to the EU COM in 2022.In addition, further knowledge identified in the implementation process of MSFD or HELCOMregulations is necessary. In the Baltic Sea region, the so-called HELCOM Science Agenda, which iscurrently prepared, is particularly important with the aim of adopting it in autumn 2021 togetherwith the re-launch of the Baltic Sea Action Plan. Schleswig-Holstein is involved in the voting processbetween the Federal Government and the regional governments.11. continue to recognize the Baltic Sea as international waters, with freedom of navigation and concerningthe protection of the environmentThe recognition of the Baltic Sea as international waters is subject to inter- and supranational as wellas global regulations and agreements. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of Transport and DigitalInfrastructure (BMVI) is in charge of international shipping and the Federal Ministry for the Envi-ronment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and its respective divisions are responsiblefor international environmental protection.The Ministry of Energy Transition, Agriculture, Environment, Nature and Digitalisation of the Stateof Schleswig-Holstein (MELUND) is involved in technical and political issues by the respective fed-eral authorities and, if necessary, can contribute comments. This takes place within the frameworkof HELCOM and its working groups MARITIME, PRESSURE and STATE & CONSERVATIONand their overarching decision-making levels.The decision on the German position represented at the respective international levels is the respon-sibility of the Federation, which is responsible for the external representation of Germany in theinternational context.Schleswig-Holstein therefore does not carry out its own measures, projects or actions in relation to therecognition of the Baltic Sea as international waters.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 8512. continue and enhance national and international efforts to reduce emissions of nutrients to the Baltic SeaSchleswig-Holstein continues to support intensively the reduction of nutrient emissions and inputs inthe Baltic Sea. This is part of the implementation of the relevant EU legislation, in particular the EUWater Framework Directive (WFD) and the Maritime Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Schle-swig-Holstein was involved in the development of currently valid reduction targets for German BalticSea waters and their catchment areas. The implementation of these measures is currently under way inthe river basin units according to the WFD as well as in the marine waters according to MSRL. Thelatter also includes reduction targets and measures developed within the framework of HELCOM.13. ensure monitoring and analysis of the state of the Baltic Sea ecosystem in line with the requirements ofthe Espoo Convention and again reaffirm that large scale projects that have a major impact on ecosystemsin the Baltic Sea region have to comply with the obligations arising from relevant international treaties andconventions, including the Espoo Convention and the Helsinki ConventionSchleswig-Holstein is continuing the environmental monitoring of its own coastal waters, whichhas existed for many years and adapted to new requirements or knowledge, as part of the monitor-ing program of the federal and coastal states. A program update is necessary from time to time. EUenvironmental requirements are also relevant in this context. The corresponding implementationincludes relevant basics and agreements from international conventions. This is the case with regardto the Baltic Sea, in particular for HELCOM in the context of the regionally coherent implementa-tion of this Directive as required by the MSFD. Therefore, agreements relevant to Germany from thecurrently valid HELCOM monitoring program are included in the national measurement program,most recently this was the case when updating the national monitoring program according to MSFDin October 2020 (see also www.meeresschutz.info/berichte.html).14. support that the HELCOM chairmanship – also in the light of the socio-political and economic conse-quences of the Covid-19 pandemic – pursues the objecitves of explicitly considering aspects of sustainability,relevance for the climate and biodiversity as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea Action Plan(BSAP) and future HELCOM decisions and – in accordance with the calls for action of the Baltic Sea Par-liamentary Conference not only to update the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) but also to visibly acceleratesand intensify its implementation, to work together to the best of all abilities fo further reduce the excessivenutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well as to strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021The socio-political and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are not the responsibil-ity of MELUND.Schleswig-Holstein is actively involved in the German HELCOM Presidency. On 1 July 2020, thestate government – here the responsible MELUND – took over the vice-presidency for one year,which will then be handed over to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for another year. Schleswig-Holsteintherefore actively supports the Federal Government in its Presidency by elaborating common prioritytopics, working sheets and concept papers for the discussion in the respective HELCOM commit-tees. The main topics concern not only aspects of sustainability (including sustainable blue growth),climate and biodiversity protection, but also other key issues, relevant for Schleswig-Holstein, such asammunition in the sea, noise, sound, eutrophication and damage substances as well as marine waste,including, inter alia, ghost networks, development of monitoring and evaluation requirements, inten-86 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Reportsification of implementation and progressive revision of the HELCOM Regional Action Plan MarineLitter and including marine litter as a binding part of the Baltic Sea Action Plan.(see also https://helcomfi/about-us/chairmanship/germany-2020-2022)The overarching topics mentioned here are also core topics of HELCOM, which Germany intends toadvance with concrete proposals together with all Baltic Sea countries. The success of these efforts de-pends inter alia on the willingness of the HELCOM Community to develop the German proposals,as the principle of unanimity applies to HELCOM agreements.In addition, Schleswig-Holstein contributes two projects as so-called best practice examples on cli-mate change (A) and eutrophication (B):• Baltic Sea Coast 2100 Strategy in Schleswig-Holstein (2019-2024): The aim is a BalticSea coast that is ecologically sustainable and adapted to the consequences of climatechange in the long term. This joint project will result in an overall strategy “Developmentof the Baltic Sea Coast 2100” adopted by the state government of Schleswig-Holstein.• Project “Modellregion Schlei” in Schleswig-Holstein (beginning in 2020): In additionto the reduction of nutrient inputs in the Schlei, the focus of this integrative project ison the conservation and development of biodiversity and biological climate protection aswell as on the synergy effects between these areas.In addition, Schleswig-Holstein has agreed to present the venue for the HELCOM Ministerial Con-ference scheduled for 20 October 2021. One focal point will be the adoption of the revised Baltic SeaAction Plan.15. acknowledging the priorities of Germany’s HELCOM Chairmanship to intensify efforts to monitor andto treat the problem of dumped munitions, wrecks and ghost nets in the Baltic Sea on a common interna-tional approach supporting the existing national and international efforts and responsibilities, moreover tostrengthen existing political structures and scientific projects, also thus to make the Baltic Sea region becomea global leader in the field of solving problems associated with dumped munitions and unexploded ordnancelocated underwater as well as in the field of wrecks and ghost netsThe Baltic Sea region is the leading region on these topics all over the world. To which extent HEL-COM’s objectives can be reached under the German Presidency is not the responsibility of the state ofSchleswig-Holstein or Germany. However, the German Presidency and the respective vice-presidentsof the countries have agreed on further proposals to deal with and solve the burdens, which also resultin marine ammunition and ghost networks, in order to advance these issues in the Baltic Sea regiontogether with all the parties (see paragraph 14).Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 87With regard to ammunition loads in the sea, a particular challenge is to attract further contractingparties to participate in the issue in order to obtain as comprehensive a picture as possible of theconventional ammunition in the Baltic Sea. A first success is visible. The work of the ad hoc workinggroup HELCOM Submerged, which expires at the end of 2020, will continue as a submerged expertnetwork at the request of Germany and Poland. The work can go on. The Heads of Delegation haveto take a corresponding decision by 2021. Some measures asked for in point 24 of the 28th BSPCresolution are already on the way. The financing instrument for dealing with ammunition in the BalticSea region is still outstanding.Baltic Sea-wide concepts for monitoring and handling ammunition start by corresponding projects.The Kiel Munitions Clearance Week 2021 – to take place on 10 September 2021 – can form a specialmilestone here. The aim of this international event is to provide a platform for politics, science, busi-ness and administration to inform and exchange information on marine ammunition, the impactsand possibilities of handling. Schleswig-Holstein has developed over the last 10 years a kind of knowl-edge region for ammunition in the Sea and has launched many projects and initiatives.Kiel Munitions Clearance Week 2021 is an intermediate target, but also a starting point for the nextstep towards an orderly clearing concept for the Baltic Sea. This can function as a starting point forconcepts of other marine areas. In addition to the previously described establishment of the expertnetwork Submerged under HELCOM REPONSE, Kiel Ammunition Clearance Week 2021 willalso make a visible contribution to point 15 of the 29th BSPC resolution. During this event, the twoEU-funded projects DAIMON 2 and BASTA will organize project meetings under Polish and Germancoordination, thus underlining the importance of the Baltic Sea region for the topic. This will onceagain present the Baltic Sea region as an important example in the handling of marine ammunition.On 01 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nationsentered into force. Objective 14 (SDG-14) describes the conservation and sustainable use of oceans,seas and marine resources. The goals described are realistic by 2030 under the precondition that allactors will take the necessary measures. Regional cooperation such as HELCOM contributes to this,among other things, with the objectives formulated for the German Presidency. The Baltic Sea Parlia-mentary Conference can take a responsible position here in order to persuade its own governments toadopt at least a regionally coordinated strategy for dealing with marine ammunition and, above all, toresolve the issue of a sustainable financial instrument.With regard to ghost networks, a wide range of initiatives, activities and research projects are on theway or in preparation:At the political level, the 93rd. Conference of Environment Ministers on 15 November 2019 asked theBund/Länder Working Group North and Baltic Sea (BLANO), including the fisheries industry, na-ture conservation associations and, where appropriate, other actors, to identify appropriate measuresfor the MSFD programme as well as targeted research and development needs to solve the ghost net-work problem in the North and Baltic Seas. It also asked BLANO to explore possible financial instru-ments and to report on the results to the Conference of Environment Ministers as soon as possible.88 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportAs part of the updating of the MSFD Action Programmes, an existing measure continues under the newtitle “Prevention, Search, Recovery and Disposal of Ghost Networks”. It includes a comprehensive port-folio of measures (avoidance, mapping, locating, collecting, discarding, recycling, eco-friendly materi-als, marking, producer responsibility, educational work), thereby contributing to the implementation ofthe HELCOM BSAP and the HELCOM Recommendation 36/1 (Regional Marine Litter Action Plan).In addition, the National Round Table on Sea Waste has treated the ghost network problem since2016 in order to support and operationalize the implementation of the MSFD measures to achievethe national environmental objective “sea without exposure to waste”. Schleswig-Holstein has takenpart in this discussion. In this context, expertise from the relevant areas (fishing and port industry,public authorities, environmental associations, etc.) will be brought together in order to define andoperationalize concrete options for action.During the ongoing German HELCOM presidency and the Schleswig-Holstein vice-chairmanship,the following other thematic issues are focal points:Intensification of activities to prevent, search and salvage “ghost nets” in the Baltic Sea region:Up to now, the following measures have existed for the German Baltic Sea waters:• Methods for mapping ghost nets;• Strategies to avoid loss of fishing gear; evaluation of marking systems for better retrieval of lostfishing gear;• Overview of options for the collection and handling of fishing gear out of service in ports;• Treatment scheme in ports from the design of reception facilities to recycling;• Explore recycling opportunities for fishing gear out of service;• Sonar technique for the recovery of lost fishing gear;• An environmental impact study on the impact of salvage operations and a risk assessment of am-munition loads in the sea.In this context, we have to make sure that new procedures do not create additional burdens on themarine environment. For this purpose, for example, we have to pay attention to the underwatersound inputs resulting from the sonar technology.Improving communication and knowledge-shareing between stakeholders:In particular, further improvement of communication with fishermen, various interest groupsand other organisations is important with the aim of reducing prejudices (e.g. fears about stig-matization of fisheries), to learn from the many years of experience of fishermen, to raise aware-ness of problems and, if possible, to jointly develop strategies for reducing or avoiding net losses.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 89Preparation of a HELCOM Recommendation on Abandoned, Lost and Discarded Fishing Gear(ALDFG):From the findings already gained and with the help of the exchange with fishermen and otherstakeholders, the completion of the already planned HELCOM Recommendation on ALDFG isto be tackled.SwedenRegarding Safeguarding our Environment, Seas and Oceans for Future Generations, to10. continue to support innovation as regards conservation and the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea toprotect marine biodiversity.The Swedish government is active in the work of the European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Re-gion (EUSBSR). The European Commission has approved the revised EUSBSR Action Plan on 17February 2021 and the revision process is now completed.The revised Action Plan manifests the future cooperation of all stakeholders of the EUSBSR. Witha more concise set of actions and related indicators, it aims to strengthen the ties on all levels andbe more accessible for new, interested partners. Actions are developed to translate the EUSBSR ob-jectives into results. Actions are implemented through activities. The PA Bioeconomy, for example,delivers primarily on the EUSBSR objective “Save the Sea” and the sub-objectives of “Clear Water”and “Rich and Healthy Wildlife”, which includes promoting a sustainable use of marine, agriculturaland forest resources as well as the development of rural areas.Flagships are at the heart of the EUSBSR. These can be single projects, a set of activities or processes.They form pilot activities for desired change on a practical or policy level. The flagships translate theobjectives and actions into concrete activities, by e.g. developing innovative solutions, new method-ology or new forms of cooperation.Sweden is highly active in the work of HELCOM, chairing the work of working groups and expertgroups.As part of this work we are engaged in all work-strands from minimizing negative impacts of pollu-tion and eutrophication to coordination efforts with other relevant entities such as Baltfish regardingthe impacts of fisheries. The protection of biodiversity is at the core of the HELCOM work and theoverarching vision, but the success of the HELCOM agreements is completely dependent on nationalimplementation.The main work of HELCOM is currently to update the BSAP and Sweden is taking a very active rolein the drafting of new measures and processes. A process is already set up to certify that all aspects ofthe updated BSAP will be designated to an authority in Sweden.90 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report12. continue to recognise the Baltic Sea as international waters, with freedom of navigation and concerningthe protection of the environment.All parties to HELCOM are signatories to UNCLOS and therefore guarantee the freedom of navi-gation. However, the Baltic Sea ecosystem is highly affected by human activities and therefore workis ongoing to minimize impacts from the maritime sector. The SECA and NECA as well as theobligation for passenger ships to land blackwater are examples of this. Impacts on seabirds, marinemammals, and fish stocks as well as other impacts may warrant the need for additional measures. TheSwedish government is actively working to implement agreed recommendations as well as reviewingthe need for additional measures.13. continue and enhance national and international efforts to reduce emissions of nutrients to the BalticSea.The HELCOM ministerial declaration of 2018 concludes that the update of the BSAP will be at leastas ambitious as the present BSAP which especially refers to emissions of nutrients and eutrophication.In addition, the ongoing work with the updated BSAP is focused on identifying the need for addi-tional measures to reach the agreed emission reduction targets of the BSAP.The government fully supports a maintained ambition and is currently finalizing the programmes ofmeasures for the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive that arepart of the Swedish efforts to reach the HELCOM goals. None of the goals can be reached unlessintegrated into the work and management of relevant sectors such as agriculture, waste management,shipping, and traffic. The BSPC participants can contribute to this development by facilitating anddriving the necessary changes in national sectorial management and policy-decisions.14. ensure continuous monitoring and analysis of the state of the Baltic Sea ecosystem in line with the re-quirements of the Espoo Convention and again reaffirm that large scale projects that have a major impacton ecosystems in the Baltic Sea region have to comply with the obligations arising from relevant internation-al treaties and conventions, including the Espoo Convention and the Helsinki Convention;HELCOM continues to monitor and compile national monitoring data as a basis for its regionalstatus assessments. HELCOM published its latest Holistic Assessment of the Baltic Sea HOLAS IIin 2018 and is currently planning the work to develop the next assessment, HOLAS III in 2023. TheSwedish government is supporting this work both financially and by participating, but the contin-uation is dependent on support from all parties. The Swedish government is also a signatory to theEspoo convention and complies with the provisions of the convention.15. support that the HELCOM chairmanship – also in the light of the socio-political and economic conse-quences of the COVID-19 pandemic – pursues the objectives of explicitly considering aspects of sustainabil-Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 91ity, relevance for the climate and biodiversity, as well as suitability in the updating of the Baltic Sea ActionPlan and future HELCOM decisions and - in accordance with the calls for action of the BSPC - not onlyto update the Baltic Sea Action Plan but also to visibly accelerate and intensify its implementation, to worktogether to the best of all abilities to further reduce the excessive nutrient load in the Baltic Sea, as well asto strive for another Ministerial Meeting in 2021;The Swedish government fully supports the HELCOM chairmanship, including the present Germanchairmanship including its objectives. The pandemic has led to several changes of the work of HEL-COM and most notably that all meetings have been held online since March 2020. No meetings havebeen cancelled due to the pandemic, and all parties continue to work constructively, adapting to thepresent situation. This has showed that digital meetings work quite well in many cases, and the Swed-ish government notes that this could have a positive effect for the future by paving the way for moredigital meetings and only having physical meetings when necessary. This is good for the environment.The Swedish government would like to extend its gratitude to the German chairmanship, all contract-ing parties, and the secretariat for the efficient and professional way the work has been adapted to thesituation that has followed from the COVID-19 pandemic.The Swedish government would furthermore like to point out that the implementation of the BSAPis almost completely dependent on national and/or joint implementation. Although the coordina-tion and joint decisions taken by HELCOM are important facilitators that support partner actions,it is the national and sectorial implementation work that will improve the status of the Baltic Sea.The German chairmanship is planning for a ministerial meeting in October for the adoption of theupdated BSAP.16. acknowledging the priorities of Germany’s HELCOM Chairmanship to intensify efforts to monitor andto treat the problem of dumped munitions, wrecks and ghost nets in the Baltic Sea on a common interna-tional approach supporting the existing national and international efforts and responsibilities, moreover tostrengthen existing political structures and scientific projects, also thus to make the Baltic Sea region becomea global leader in the field of solving problems associated with dumped munitions and unexploded ordnancelocated underwater as well as in the field of wrecks and ghost nets.Regarding sea mines from WW1 and WW2, Swedish naval units continue to support the Baltic statesin underwater mine clearance. This support is conducted both for environmental reasons as well as tosecure the sea lines of communications in the Baltic Sea.The Swedish government supports the priorities of the German chairmanship and is actively engagedin the discussions on updating the Baltic Sea Action Plan. The Swedish government has initiated workon a national programme on wrecks where several priority wrecks have been identified for which adecontamination programme has been initiated. In addition, Sweden has an ambitious programmefor decontamination of contaminated soil, mostly related to historic industrial activities, that alsoinclude harbour and marine areas. Regarding ghost nets, the Swedish government provides financialsupport to the fishing industry and other stakeholders, who also participate in the work on retrievinglost fishing gear. This work also relates to the implementation of the EU plastics directive.92 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportList of MembersMember Member MP Staff Point of ContactParliamentParliament of Ms Cecilie Tenfjord-Toftby Ms Johanna Ingvarsson/Mr Dan AlvarssonSweden Chair of the WG International Department of the SwedishSubstitute: ParliamentMs Pernilla Stålhammar Swedish Delegation to the BSPC,RiksdagenSE-10012 StockholmSwedenTel: +468 08-786 50 48johanna.ingvarsson@riksdagen.sedan.alvarsson@riksdagen.seParliament of Åland Ms Liz Mattsson Mr Sten ErikssonVice-Chair of the WG Assistant to the ParliamentThe Åland ParliamentPB 69AX-22101 MariehamnÅland IslandsTel: +358 18 25 474 / +358 457 529 2964sten.eriksson@lagtinget.axParliament of Mr Kolbeinn Óttarsson Mr Helgi ThorsteinssonIceland Proppé Secretary to the Icelandic Delegation to theVice-Chair of the WG Nordic CouncilAlthingiAusturstræti 8-10IS - 150 ReykjavíkIcelandTel: +354 6666 790helgith@althingi.isBaltic Assembly Mr Erki Savisaar, Chair of Ms Agnija Antanoviča/Ms Rovena Bergathe Natural Resources and Secretariat of the Baltic AssemblyEnvironment Committee of Citadeles Street 2, room 616the BA; Riga LV-1010,LatviaSubstitute: Tel: +371 67225178Ms Urve Tiidus, Chair of agnija.antanovica@baltasam.orgthe Security and Defence rovena.berga@baltasam.orgCommittee of the BA.Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 93Parliament of Mr Christian Juhl Ms Kamilla KjelgaardDenmark The International SecretariatThe Parliament of Denmark, Christiansborg1240 CopenhagenDenmarkTel: +45 3337 5500 / +45 3337 3463Kamilla.Kjelgaard@ft.dkParliament of Ms Urve Tiidus Ms Regina SeppEstonia Mr Erki Savisaar Foreign Relations DepartmentRiigikogu of the Republic of EstoniaLossi plats 1A15165 TallinnEstoniaTel: +372 631 6397GSM: +372 53089818Regina.Sepp@riigikogu.eeParliament of the Mr Johannes Schraps Ms Katalin Zador/Ms Pia-SophieFederal Republic of Substitute: BrandenburgGermany Ms Petra Nicolaisen Deutscher BundestagMr Peter Stein Division International ParliamentaryAssembliesPlatz der Republik 111011 BerlinGermanyTel: +49 30 / 227-32553katalin.zador@bundestag.depia-sophie.brandenburg@bundestag.debspc@bundestag.deParliament of Ms Mai Kivelä Mr Mika Laaksonen/Ms Maarit ImmonenFinland Substitute: The Parliament of FinlandMr Joonas Könttä 00102 EduskuntaFinlandTel: +358 9 4321mika.laaksonen@eduskunta.fimaarit.immonen@parliament.fi94 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportParliament of the Mr Alexander Mohrenberg Ms Friederike LünzmannFree and Hanseatic State Parliament of the Free and HanseaticCity of Hamburg City of HamburgAdministration of the ParliamentSchmiedestraße 220095 HamburgGermanyTel: +49 40 4 28 31-1352Fax: +49 40 4 27 31-2271friederike.luenzmann@bk.hamburg.deinternationales@bk.hamburg.deKaliningrad Mr Alexander V. Nikulin Ms Marina ProzorovaRegional Duma Kaliningrad Regional DumaUl. Kirova 17RUS - 236022 KaliningradTel: +7 4012-91 70 19prozorova@duma39.ruParliament of Latvia Mr Arvils Ašeradens Ms Ingrida SticenkoSaeimaInterparliamentary Relations Bureau of theParliament of LatviaJēkaba Street 10/12Rīga LV-1811LatviaTel: +371 6 7087335Ingrida.Sticenko@saeima.lvParliament of Mr Eugenijus Gentvilas Mrs Renata GodfreyLithuania SeimasGediminas Ave 532002 VilniusLithuaniaTel: +370 5239 6220Renata.Godfrey@lrs.ltParliament of Mr Philipp da Cunha Mr Georg Strätker/Ms Evgeniya BakalovaMecklenburg- Substitute: State Parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Ms Beate Schlupp VorpommernLennéstr. 119053 SchwerinGermanyTel: +49 385 525 1530/+49 385 525 1531(International Secretariat)Georg.Straetker@landtag-mv.deevgeniya.bakalova@landtag-mv.deinternational@landtag-mv.deClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 95Nordic Council Mr Ketil Kjenseth Mr Arne Fogt Bergby/Ms Mette GervinDamsgaardNordic CouncilVed Stranden 18DK-1061 Copenhagen KDenmarkTel: +45 33 96 04 00arfber@norden.orgmetdam@norden.orgParliament of Ms Lene Westgaard-Halle Mr Thomas FraserNorway The Norwegian Parliament0026 OsloNorwayTel: +47 23 31 35 91/+47 40 45 54 50thomas.fraser@stortinget.noParliament of Mr Kacper Płażyński Mr Piotr KoperskiPoland Substitute: Secretary of the Delegation of the Sejm andMr Jarosław Wałęsa the Senate of the Republic of Poland to theBSPC,International and European Union AffairsOffice,Chancellery of the Senate of the Republic ofPoland6 Wiejska Str.00-902 WarsawPolandTel: +48 22 694 95 65Piotr.Koperski@senat.gov.plState Duma of the Ms Valentina Pivnenko Ms Yulia Guskova/Ms Marina YakovlevaFederal Assembly Interparliamentary Relations Departmentof the Russian State Duma of the Federal Assembly of theFederation Russian Federation1 Okhotny Ryad St.RU-103012 MoscowRussian FederationTel: +7 495 692 2626Fax: +7 495 692 3513guskova@duma.gov.ruParliament of Mr Joschka Knuth Ms Jutta Schmidt-HolländerSchleswig-Holstein Head of DivisionState Parliament of Schleswig-HolsteinPostfach 712124171 KielGermanyTel: +49 431 988 1159jutta.schmidt-hollaender@landtag.ltsh.de96 Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim ReportWG SecretariatMr Bodo BahrSecretary General of the BSPCSchlossgartenallee 1519061 SchwerinGermanyTel: +49 171 5512557bodo.bahr@bspcmail.nethttp://www.bspc.netMr Dan AlvarssonInternational AdvisorInternational Department of the Swedish ParliamentSwedish Delegation to the BSPC,RiksdagenSE-100 12 StockholmSwedenTel: +8-786 50 48dan.alvarsson@riksdagen.seClimate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) – Interim Report 97