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Baltic Sea is slowly dying 1/3 |
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By Monika ROMANSKA, Eko i My Magazine, Poland
The first part starts from the introduction of some facts – Baltic Sea
is surrounded by nine countries, which derive profits from it, but in
fact there is no governmental body, which would take care about Baltic
Sea interests. Baltic Sea is known as the most polluted sea on our
planet.
Then I present hydrographical description of our sea and the consequences of it – due to inland location there is very narrow connection between Baltic Sea and salted ocean waters. The effect of it is that Baltic is a brackish sea, which suffer the lack of oxygen in bottom parts. Rare inflows bring not only salted water but also fresh oxygen. Then I explain hypoxia and eutrophication processes, and pollution role in it, as it is the most important problem to keep Baltic Sea alive. I presen some engineering propositions how to bring more oxygen to the bottom parts of the sea.
The separate chapter is about the agricultural impact on the Baltic Sea condition. 40 percent of nitrogen and 50 percent of phosphorus comes from agriculture in the entire Baltic Sea catchment area. What we can do to decrease it? There is some proposals, like according to the principle „public money for the public goods”, supporting farmers in protection of water, climate, biodiversity, wetland restoration etc. Big animal farms should be treated like an industry and according to rule „polluters pay” they should incur the costs of their pollutions. Farmers should more focus on protection of their nearest lake or river and taking the responsibility of it than on Baltic sea – think globally but work locally.
The last chapter is a short analysis of the political and social attitude to the protection of the Baltic Sea in the baltic region. We can notice that the larger polluters like Poland and Russia transfer their loads to the northern countries. This creates unfair asymmetry: polluters don't see the negative effects of eutrophication, but from the other hand they will have to carry the costs of the big investments to reduce their nutrients. There is some proposals to balance it: e.g. to implement the international nutrient trading system.
Next articles will describe the legal institutions and international bodies, the EU strategy and some of the initiatives which were taken in Poland to reduce the Baltic Sea pollution.
PDF of the ORIGINAL ARTICLE (in Polish)
Online ORIGINAL ARTICLE (in Polish)
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