Helcom is a regional seas convention concluded by all nine Baltic Sea states as well as the European Union. For almost 50 years our organizations worked to protect the Baltic Sea and its marine resources for the benefit of nature and humankind alike. In essence, implementing sustainable development goal 14 even before its adoption by the UN.
HALCOM work covers a vast range of topics such as species and biotopes, marine protected areas, agriculture, wastewater, fisheries, shipping, or marine litter and noise to name a few. And we also engage in monitoring and assessment. Our strategic program of action, the Baltic Sea Action Plan, is a concrete tool for protecting the sea.
It has four main segments. Ecosystem, hazardous substances, and litter. sea-based activities and eutrophication and it will be key to charting outcomes course through 23. The goal of the Baltic Sea Action Plan is to achieve a good environmental status of the sea, ultimately leading to a Baltic Sea in a healthy state. Biodiversity is at the center of this work and Baltic Biodiversity is globally unique. But this diversity is also facing some of the highest levels of pressures in the world.
Pressures that are caused by human nature. The effects of climate change can also be seen more rapidly in the Baltic than in most places on the globe, putting still further stress on species and habitats. The deterioration of biodiversity and the changes we can see coming on the horizon makes nature conservation efforts both increasingly more urgent and more crucial.
One concrete working area is marine protected areas. where Helcom strives to ensure that they are effectively managed and that they create a network that is ecologically coherent, thus genuinely benefiting biodiversity, as well as increasing resilience in the face of a changing climate. With regards to spatial coverage, the network of protected areas in the Baltic was already in 2010 the first in the world to reach the target of 10% of protected areas. Currently, Almost 14% of the Baltic Sea is covered by marine protected areas. Help on actions for biodiversity were reviewed and updated as part of the adoption of the Baltic Sea Action Plan last year to ensure that they are both adequate and feasible and that they concretely contribute to reaching Goal 14. The Sustainable Development Goal 14 is not only about conservation, but also about the sustainable use of oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
The evaluation of ecosystem services and socio-economic benefits focuses on the many human pressures we have to deal with. By ecosystem services, we mean all the processes and outputs that nature provides us with. These include provisioning services such as food and water, Regulatory and maintenance services such as carbon storage and cultural ecosystem services such as recreation and tourism At HALCOM we work on enhanced regional cooperation to explore the potential of the Baltic Sea to provide ecosystem services And this work feeds information to policy makers as they will want to make evidence-based decisions and develop strategies that have a real effect Another question to the Baltic Sea and a key concern to Helcom is the high and rapidly increasing levels of marine plastic litter and microplastics.
These are serious threats to the marine environment in a global scale. This is why Helcom will reduce marine litter on the beaches by at least 30 percent by 2025 and by 50 percent by 2030 from the base amount of 40 liter items per 100 meters of beach. The work will start with the reduction of the most commonly found single-use plastic items and items related to fishing. Moreover, in 2023, ELCOM will continue developing alternative reduction targets for marine nature. Such regionally coordinated targets will guide the progress towards relevant regional and EU threshold values.
The Regional Agile Manure Manure Meter One of the first in the world was updated last year. The Action Plan will be the backbone for reaching these targets. Among other initiatives on the way to a less plastic leader on the sea, Elcom supports the development of a global instrument to more effectively and comprehensively deal with plastic pollution. How do we know whether the Baltic Sea Action Plan is actually working?
The answer is by measuring changes using appropriate shared tools. This is where health communicators step in. Health communicators are regionally agreed and address multiple topics such as nutrification, hazardous substances and biodiversity levels. They provide a scientifically driven understanding of the status of the marine environment. The assessment of status offers a snapshot of how each component is doing relative to a threshold value that reflects good environmental status.
This provides a baseline where follow-up actions are needed, by exploring trends or changes between assessment areas, we can see if improvements or deterioration has occurred. Health conditions that harm others, the indicators certainly are applicable for the Politics in Action Plan, useful for national purposes, valid for use in the E-Migraine Strategy Framework Directive and hopes in the future to support processes of sustainable development goals.