Editorial: The Year 1998

The purpose is to focus upon the environmental state of the salt waters
covering 70.8% of the Earth's surface, and upon man's dependence on the ocean, for food, for transport, for recreational purposes. Sustainability is a must, and every year should be the year of the ocean...

Seas at risk
Magda Wojtowicz from Poland has created a beautiful piece of art used as cover for this issue of the BSP Newsletter. Her picture shows fishermen working at dawn. She has wanted to describe the hardness of the
fishermen's work, and the need for the Baltic Sea to stay clean so that people can get fish to eat. She won the first prize in the art competition, "Industries around the Baltic Sea" announced by Pappilansalmi Lower Secondary School, Hamina, Finland. The competition is presented on pages 24-25. The water bodies on the earth are interconnected and what is done in one area might affect water in other areas.

Helcom (http://www.helcom.fi)  has recently presented the main problems of the
Baltic Sea in the following words: The concentrations of oxygen and hydrogen sulphide, the input to the Baltic Sea from run-offs and deposits from the atmosphere, the amount of nutrients, pelagic and benthic biology, heavy metals, oil pollution, helogenated hydrocarbons, artificial radionuclides, chemical munitions, sanitary conditions, nature conservation, fish stock and diseases.

So seas are at risk.

What happens to life in the Baltic Sea?
What causes toxic algae blooms (pages 4-5) and what are the consequences? What actions must be taken?

Public Participation Convention
In June 1998 European Ministers of Environment will meet in Aarhus,
Denmark for the fourth "Environment for Europe" conference. Public
Participation Convention is a main topic, and NGOs have for the first time
ever been invited to take direct part in the event.

Public participation took place in this school year, when BSP students and teachers with Internet access were in dialogue with politicians through Baltic 21.
Baltic 21 is an Agenda for the Baltic region with ongoing cross-sectorial
work to achieve sustainability, and BSP schools have given ideas, and
forwarded suggestions for solutions, some of which are quoted on page 22.

Air Quality.
Man's use of resources, and the possible global warming is causing much
debate, and some possible consequences are presented to the reader in the
article on pages 6-7. Deposits from the atmosphere reaches the Baltic, and
affects the quality of the water: Sulphur, nitrogen, tropospheric ozone,
radioactivity and heavy metals influence man and beast.

To deepen on these combined issues the BSP Learners' Guide no. 2, "Working for a Better Air Quality in the Baltic Region" has been recently published, dealing with a lot of the aspects in a way so that teachers and students can work with
the problems, find out data, discuss the issues, and hopefully come forward with suggestions for solutions.

On the positive side:
Fishes in the Baltic region do show a decrease in heavy metals, seals are enlarging their numbers, and the sea eagles have increasing breeding success. In Denmark light pollution has been prohibited by law due to one active BSP teacher and his students.