The government hopes to slow the eutrophication process in the Baltic Sea through various kinds of targeted environmental subsidies to agriculture.
The government issued a report on Friday on the challenges facing the Baltic. According to the report, the excessive growth in vegetation resulting from phosphorous and nitrogen emissions is the worst problem in the Baltic.
The biggest culprit in this is agriculture, which accounts for 60 per cent of Finland’s phosphorous emissions and 50 per cent of its nitrogen emissions.
The government’s goals are to reduce nutrient emissions of agriculture by a third by 2015 compared with the level in 2001-2005.
“This cannot be achieved with the current measures”, said Minister of European Affairs Astrid Thors (Swed. People’s Party).
The government hopes that the European Union’s Baltic Sea strategy might provide additional help. The European Commission is expected to put forward its proposal on the matter next week.
The government wants to reduce the burden placed on the sea by agriculture through new environmental subsidies. Support for wetlands is to be altered from 2010 in such a way that the prevention of eutrophication is taken into consideration. In 2012 special subsidy contracts are to become available for agriculture, and in 2014 full acount is to be taken of the quality of fertiliser and nutrients.
The aim is also to take the goals of water protection into consideration in agricultural investment subsidies.
The report stipulates that nutrient emissions can be reduced efficiently by developing fishing and by reducing emissions from ships.
The Baltic Sea is a shallow body of water with a low level of salinity, where the water changes slowly.
Thors noted that in addition to eutrophication, the Baltic Sea is plagued by dead areas of sea bottom. “They are as big in area as the entire surface area of Denmark”, she said on Friday.
Finland accounts for about 10 per cent of the phosphorous emissions into the Baltic Sea and 11 per cent of the nitrogen.
Poland is responsible for 34 per cent of the phosphorous and 27 per cent of the nitrogen.
More than two-thirds of the nitrogen emissions into the Baltic are from agriculture, and from sewage from sparsely populated areas.
