How can interventions to reuse and recycle nutrients in the Baltic Sea Region be developed and operationalized? On 10 June, SEI will host an online workshop as part of the final regional and learning event for BONUS RETURN, which will bring together stakeholders from around the Baltic Sea Region to pool expertise on these issues.
The Baltic Sea is one of the planet’s most vulnerable ecosystems. It is an almost entirely enclosed system surrounded by a huge drainage area four times as large as the sea itself. It is inhabited by 85 million people in a highly industrialized landscape dominated by intense agriculture and forestry. Despite some progress, eutrophication into the Baltic Sea by wastewaters, agriculture, pollution from factories and airborne deposits remains a challenge. A combination of technical and policy innovation as well as financial and economic incentives are needed to transform ocean-related sectors, both sea-based and land-based. Presently, while there are a handful of relevant initiatives, these are limited in their sectoral scope.
The workshop aims at producing tangible cross-sectoral prototype interventions that can be taken forward and further developed as impact projects within the broader umbrella of “Missions” for oceans.
In line with HELCOM’s goal for the region, the mission addressed in this workshop is of a Baltic Sea unaffected by pollution to respond to the grand challenge as formulated by the EU on “healthy oceans, coasts and inland water”. We start from the conviction that to achieve the mission, linear models of use and dispose are insufficient. Instead, interventions that reduce-reuse-recycle-recover are fundamental to closing the loop, limit the total input of nutrients and pollutants into watersheds and the ocean, and at the same time address emissions from the extraction of raw materials.
During the workshop, you will be tasked with finding solutions that bring us closer to achieving the overarching mission and its targets: shaping circular solutions that reduce the pressure on the Baltic Sea. You will be divided into working streams to design concrete interventions for the Baltic Sea Region.
Please follow this link to the BONUS RETURN website to see a detailed plan for the event.
Registration is now closed.
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