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Keit Pentus: maritime planning could be started from the Gulf of Riga and the surroundings of the island of Hiiumaa

On her meeting with environmental NGOs, the Minister of the Environment Keit Pentus discussed maritime planning, the development plan for nature conservation and restriction of sulphur content in marine fuels. The recovery of waste from oil shale excavation and the disclosure of environmental notices were also discussed.

“Maritime planning is one of the topics where the Ministry and environmental NGOs have similar views. We should start from an area that can be viewed as a whole. However, planning the entire maritime space of Estonia as a single area - this is probably an impossible task,” Pentus explained. She added that the most reasonable area to start with would probably be either the surroundings of Hiiumaa or the Gulf of Riga. “At first glance, maritime planning may seem an easy task but in reality it affects the people living by the sea, sailors, fishermen, parties interested in wind energy and also the national defence of Estonia. Maritime planning will be led by the Office of the Minister of Regional Affairs but the Ministry of the Environment is one of the key actors in terms of input data on the status of the sea and marine biota.”
 
The Minister also provided an overview of the current status of the development plan for nature conservation on the meeting. “Laying down the future trends and targets for nature conservation and planning the corresponding resources is
definitely one of the key priorities for this year. We will send the text of the development plan to our partners for review and comments at the beginning of February and we are very interested in their opinions. For example, improving the public knowledge of nature is a priority in the development plan where we will certainly have various opportunities for cooperation,” said Pentus.
 
Both parties agreed that the disclosure of environmental notices to the general public could be carried out in a more comfortable and summarised manner than until now. Therefore, both parties will jointly be looking for ways to create an interactive and user-friendly information environment in that field.
 
There will be a traditional round table of the Ministry and environmental NGOs in February, focusing on a joint review of the action plan of the Ministry of the Environment for 2012.