HELCOM BLUES: Towards good environmental status in the Baltic Sea.

By Jannica Haldin, Deputy Executive Secretary of HELCOM and project manager of HELCOM BLUES.
"Most of the current changes we can see in the environment are driven by our own activities. As a consequence, we need to take measures to limit the negative impact we have on the environment. We need to make sure that we choose measures which are effective and efficient. We need to implement them and then monitor the effects that these measures, and us, have on the environment.
"HELCOM BLUES fills some of the gaps we currently have in our understanding of the Baltic Sea’s marine environment and our impacts on it - the better our understanding of the Baltic Sea, the more effective our response. Analyses needed to establish effective regional measures, improving the assessment of status of the environment, and the provisioning of the necessary data are key focus areas of HELCOM BLUES.
"The sea doesn’t recognise human borders, so HELCOM BLUES works to ensure that the methods, threshold values and assessments that are being developed are relevant for the entire Baltic Sea region, and easily accessible so they can be used when making decisions in the future.
"The project also underpins the implementation of the updated Baltic Sea Action Plan, HELCOM’s strategic programme of actions for a healthy Baltic Sea, and it supports the national efforts of the Baltic Sea’s EU countries in their reporting of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, or MSFD.
HELCOM BLUES is one of the steppingstones towards achieving Good Environmental Status, or GES, in the Baltic Sea, taking us closer to our overall objective of a Baltic Sea in a healthy state."
More info about HELCOM BLUES: blues.helcom.fi