Sustainable Development In The Baltic And Beyond

This book documents and promotes the experiences from the 2nd Conference on Integrative Approaches Towards Sustainability (SHARING), held in Jurmala, Latvia, on May 11th to 24th, 2005. Attended by over 200 delegates from across the Baltic Sea region and beyond, the event provided an important contribution towards strengthening the integration of the region's RTD community and the sharing of knowledge and expertise in the Baltic, across Europe (including the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions) and elsewhere. The first part of this book contains some introductory remarks on sustainable development as a whole and on integratives approaches in particular. Furthermore, issues related to cleaner production and the moves towards zero emissions are outlined. Part two of the book focuses on developments in the Baltic Sea Region, with a special emphasis on policy, implementation technologies and technologies for sustainable development. In the next part of the book, readers will find a special section on science for sustainable development. One special feature of this section is that papers are predominantly written by young researchers, some of whom will find in this volume, for the first time, the chance to publish results from their works. The final section of the book deals with social corporate responsibility and the environment, focusing on sustainable community development, corporate responsibility at an international level and concepts for education for sustainable development. This publication provides a very good overview of sustainability issues in the Baltic and beyond, illustrating the number of excellent works being performed by municipalities, universities, research agencies and NGOs, also showing the various ways. via which sustainability can be delivered.

The challenges of sustainable development require that everybody, every institution and every nation work towards long-term strategies in order to move away from unsustainable practices. The same line of thinking applies to all nations around the Baltic Sea. A general challenge for the Baltic Sea region is to broaden the interest of people in discussions of national approaches supporting sustainability. Finding effective instruments to support the process of sustainable development in countries in transition with an emerging and largely inexperienced entrepreneur community and economically fragile, is as important as the promotion of long-term integrated sustainability strategies in countries which have well established democracies. The knowledge of the ongoing changes and the driving social, economic and ecological factors essential for the implementation of sustainable development in countries in transition must be broadened. A special need seen in the three Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia - as elsewhere in the Baltic region, is the need to avoid development patterns of - business as usual and to gain access to information and to advancements in sustainable development both in Europe and worldwide. The Baltic countries now joining the EU have to build capacity, for example by establishing teams of young researches to draw up sustainable development strategies at the national level, which are consistent with European strategies. A bottom-up flow from the grass-root level is required to change the pattern of development strategies in the Baltic countries. The Conference - Integrative Approaches Towards Sustainability, whose experiences are documented inthis book, was held on 26-29 March, 2003."

The book contributes to a better understanding of the role of knowledge societies in achieving sustainability. It is based on the conference with the same title held in Riga, which brought together experts from Europe and the rest of the world. The book highlights sustainable development in relation to the knowledge society and smart future manufacturing technologies, and it helps provide a better understanding of the interplay between sustainable development and knowledge society issues, and how these could lead to a better future.

The Conference addresses the subjects of regional development in an integrated way in accordance with the principles of sustainability and provides a common forum for all scientists specialising in the range of subjects included within sustainable development and planning.

This book explores environmental challenges in the Baltic region from an economic perspective. Featuring contributions from regional experts from Nordic, Baltic and Eastern European countries it addresses the response to eutrophication caused by increased loads of nutrients to the sea from agriculture, wastewater, industry and traffic, and cost-effective solutions to reach the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) targets, set up through the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM). Contributions also explore the environmental impacts of rural landscape change during the post-communist period in the Baltic Sea region and a review of the ex-post evaluations of the costs and benefits generated by Baltic Sea nutrient abatement policies. Public policies towards marine protection, wind power establishment, and attitudes to paying for environmental protection, environmental resilience and the international cooperation in the Baltic region are also discussed.

The report Baltic 2030: Bumps on the Road provides an overview of the 2030 Agenda implementation in the Baltic Sea Region, aimed at informing strategy and prioritisation discussions for national and regional collaboration. For each of the region’s eleven countries, performance on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is examined and five selected SDGs are discussed at the indicator level. Based on this analysis, the authors recommend seven avenues for action where greater collaboration in the region can support SDG achievement. The report was commissioned by the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and iis jointly published by CBSS and the Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM). It was drafted by the advisory firm Nordic Sustainability and follows the previous Bumps on the Road to 2030 report published by the NCM in 2017.

Applying much needed legal and social sciences perspectives, the book provides in depth analyses of lessons learned and remaining challenges associated with making the Ecosystem Approach fully relevant and operational in various fields of marine governance.

Coastal Zones: Solutions for the 21st Century bridges the gap between national and international efforts and the local needs for actions in communities where coastal zone challenges are faced daily. The solution-oriented approach covers issues of coastal zone management as well as responses to natural disasters. This work provides ideas on how to face the challenges, develop solutions, and localize management of common-pool resources. Coastal Zones targets academic stakeholders and coastal stakeholders who have local knowledge and experience but need a theoretical framework and a greater range of skills to make use of this experience. Represents the collaborative work of more than 200 coastal zone researchers from all continents Provides a transdisciplinary approach that draws on stakeholder knowledge as well as diverse disciplines in the natural and social sciences Provides a basis for the co-development of an effective understanding of social-ecological systems in the coastal zone