Posted on February 10, 2010 - by Venik

Russia supports plan to clean up Baltic in preparation for gas pipeline

Vladmir Putin attends summit to discuss ‘environmental aspects’ of controversial Nord Stream pipeline between Russia and Germany

Vladimir Putin today threw Russia’s weight behind an ambitious international plan to clean up the Baltic, one of the world’s most polluted seas, amid concerns from environmentalists that a gas pipeline across the Baltic seabed would disturb highly toxic sediment on the sea bed and marine habitats.

Officials attending the Baltic Sea Action Summit in Helsinki said Russia’s prime minister was expected to announce new clean-up measures in Kaliningrad, the Russian-controlled enclave on the heavily polluted south-east Baltic shore.

Putin, who flew to Helsinki from Moscow to attend the one-day summit, would also discuss “environmental aspects of the Nord Stream pipeline construction” in a speech to the summit, a statement from the Russian government said.

The Nord Stream pipeline, which is designed to carry 55bn cubic metres of Arctic region natural gas across the Baltic seabed from Russia to Germany, is due to come on line in 2012. Despite ongoing concerns and a legal challenge over its environmental impact, a final permit is expected to be issued on Friday, allowing construction to begin in April.

Organisers of the independently-run summit, attended by heads of state, government leaders and about 1,500 delegates from around the Baltic region, said its aim was to put into action a 2007 Baltic sea rescue “roadmap” by harnessing the skills and know-how of private companies and businesses, NGOs, and individuals as well as state organisations and governments.

“The response has been enormous. We have had commitments from about 140 organisations and companies,” said Anna Kotsalo-Mustonen, a co-founder of the Baltic Sea Action Group, one of the summit’s organisers. “We are not asking for money. We are asking for concrete actions from everyone who has the skills to do something positive. We want actions not words.”

Kotsalo-Mustonen said the overall hope was to reverse the decades-long degradation of the Baltic sea, a relatively shallow, highly sedimented inland water polluted by oil, shipping, agricultural fertilizer, pesticides, and human waste, and thus ensure that future generations could swim, fish and sail on it – activities that have been curtailed in recent years due to health fears and summer algal blooms.

She said the pledges received ranged from a scheme by the city of Hamburg to help ensure environmentally friendly power supplies for cruise liners to a plan to encourage best practice by farmers and foresters in Finland.

Mathias Bergman of the Foundation for a Living Baltic Sea said the summit’s joint public-private approach could provide a new model for effective, collaborative cross-border environmental action after the disappointment of the Copenhagen climate change conference in December.

“Copenhagen relied mostly on governments taking action and tried to do too much. Of course we need the political power of governments. But the basis is a public-private partnership and the commitments to act made by those who are getting involved,” Bergman said.

In addition to Putin, the summit was attended by heads of state or senior leaders from all the Baltic sea coastal countries plus Baltic “catchment area” states such as Belarus and Norway. It was hosted by President Tarja Halonen of Finland and Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish prime minister.

Officials said Putin’s attendance was a positive signal that Russia wanted to play a part in addressing environmental issues and to banish Russia’s image as the “dirty man” of the Baltic.

Previous plans to build a sewage treatment plant at Kaliningrad had failed due to lack of political leadership and local corruption, one official said. As a result, effluent from the population of 400,000 was pumped untreated into the Baltic. But after discussions with the Russians, new financing for a treatment plant had been agreed, including Russian Federation funds, the official said.

Environmental activists expressed concern that the summit’s collaborative, non-political approach may obscure continuing concerns about the $7.4bn Russian-controlled Nord Stream project, which is a top political and economic priority for Moscow and for energy-starved EU states such as Germany.

Jochen Lamp, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s Baltic project in Germany, said concerns included the impact of the pipeline in stirring up highly toxic sediment on the sea bed, disturbing marine mammal and fish habitats, and destabilising thousands of shipwrecks and offshore chemical and conventional ammunition dumps left over from the last century’s conflicts.

Lamp said the environmental impact assessment prepared by Nord Stream was insufficient and that more assurances were required regarding monitoring and compensation and restoration of affected areas. The WWF had brought a legal action against Nord Stream in the German courts that was still pending and which, he said, could delay the start of construction. The company strongly refutes the accusations.

Finnish navy commander Juha-Antero Puistola, a lecturer at the Finnish National Defence University, said increased ship cargo traffic as well as pipeline construction, especially in the overcrowded Gulf of Finland, gave urgency to efforts to enforce higher environmental standards in the Baltic.

Puistola said Russian exports through its Baltic sea ports were set to double by 2030, including increased oil exports. Cooperative agreements were also needed for safety and security reasons, he said, noting Putin’s view that the Russian Baltic fleet “has the task of safeguarding our economic interests in the Baltic sea”.

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