Baltic Sea environmental work continues despite Russian difficulties

Experts hope that the geopolitical situation with Russa and Ukraine will not overflow into the Baltic Sea work to clean up the region’s sensitive environment.

While relations with Russia are largely glacial on a diplomatic level, it does not mean that the country’s diplomats are not participating in some activities. At the London headquartered International Maritime Organization the country’s representatives are still able to attend committee meetings like MEPC, and will still make interventions, and they still sit in the canteen within the IMO Headquarters, but largely sitting alone or with representatives from countries not part of the sanctions regime. While in the IMO recently one representative from a western member state told Fathom World that it’s just not diplomatically right to even be seen having a coffee with them.

Russia is a signatory of a number of international maritime conventions, another being the Baltic Marine Environment Commission, which manages the Helsinki Commission, or Helcom for short.

The signatories of the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (the full name of the Helsinki Convention), are all nine littoral countries of the Baltic Sea, plus the European Union.

Asa result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Helcom made the decision to cancel its diplomatic meetings said Rüdiger Strempel, Helcom Executive Secretary from its headquarters on the waterfront of Helsinki’s city centre.

“If you’re looking to protect an international body of water, you need to do so with all the countries bordering on that body of water on board, otherwise, it’s going to be insufficient and inadequate. And this is something that the contracting parties to help them acknowledged in 1974, when they reached across the ideological divide at the time to join efforts and something they acknowledged again in 1992 – and it’s something they still acknowledge“, he said.

He said Helcom’s work has not ground to halt with the inability to work with Russia, which continues to be a contracting party to the Convention, and has neither withdrawn, been expelled or suspended.

But there are some difficulties he admitted.

 “Having said all this, of course, at the moment, the geopolitical background makes cooperation a bit more difficult than we would like it to be. Helcom is delivering its deliverables, in line with its timetable”.

Work with Russia is subject to what he called  “a strategic pause” and does not mean that Helcom ceases to operate, and nether does it preclude having informal meetings and gatherings, and the work of Helcom continues under its written procedures.