Valuation and Management of Nutrient Pollution in the Baltic Drainage Basin

Abstract

The Baltic Sea region catchment area (Map 8.1) covers around 1,670,000 km2 and contains a population of about 85 million people in 14 countries. A significant proportion of the world’s industrial production comes from this area, but up until around forty years ago there was little recorded environmental damage in the Baltic Sea. However, since 1960 the environmental condition of the Baltic Sea has increasingly become a cause of public concern and is currently perceived to be in an unacceptably polluted state. Marine pollution has, until recently, been considered as a relatively localised problem, mainly due to the vast dilution effect of the oceans. The Baltic Sea was the first case where environmental change effects on an entire marine ecosystem were documented. The virtual elimination of top predators like eagles and seals, the development of anoxia in deep basins and toxic blooms are examples of large-scale effects, caused by the release and accumulation of toxic substances and eutrophication related to the opening of nutrient cycles giving nitrogen and phosphorus more mobility, in the Baltic. This chapter reports on a study which focussed on Nitrogen and Phosphorus fluxes on a drainage basin wide scale (Turner et al., 1995) with the aim of identifying strategies for an effective and efficient improvement in the biological condition of the Baltic Sea and the sustaining of such conditions into the future (Gren, Turner & Wulff, 2000).