Photo: Juha Kääriä
Some members of the international MEA steering group.
Photo: Esko Sorakunnas
Baltic Sea environmental issues as background
Within HELCOM the countries around the Baltic Sea have adopted "The Baltic Sea Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Program" (JCP). A part of the implementation of the JCP is capacity building, especially in local capacity to finance and manage projects, environmental monitoring and regulatory systems, and project preparation, including environmental assessment. Together with these elements, JCP is intended to bring forward environmental audits and feasibility studies as the basis for the realization of single priority projects relating to the environmental hot spots of the cities in question.HELCOM set up a special group "Project Implementation Task Force" (PITF) for the implementation of the JCP. At the PITF meeting in Brussels, Nov. 1993, UBC presented the "Baltic Sustainable Cities Programme" as an action plan for implementation of the second element of JCP: "Institutional Strengthening and Human Resource Development". The proposed action plan was endorsed by the PITF and UBC was formally nominated as a lead party, together with Germany for implementing the second element of the JCP "Institutional Strengthening and Human Resource Development" on the local level (i.e. municipalities). The MEA project is the first concrete output of the same.
Organization based on twin-cities and good contacts
With financing from the EU Life Programme and the Ministry of Environment of Finland UBC initiated the project in the beginning of 1996. UBC's Commission on Environment decided to assign the responsibility of supervising the project to Mr Mikko Jokinen, Director of the Environmental Protection Office of the City of Turku.The cities of Helsinki and Tallinn joined the project during the early stages. Tallinn was selected for the target of the pilot study where the first experiences of the audit were to be gained. The environmetal officials of City of Helsinki had already established good working relationships with Tallinn in connection with environmental matters, through numerous previous exercises.
Among the first things to be done in the beginning was to set up an international steering group. Members of the steering group include, in additon to representatives of the UBC and the Cities of Tallinn (Estonia), Helsinki and Turku (Finland) participants from the Finnish and Estonian Ministeries of Environmen, as well as representation by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM).
First target to produce a model of MEA
The aim of the MEA-project is to introduce "Municipal Environmental Auditing Scheme" to the cities of the Baltic Sea Region. The project also aims at providing an environmentally sound basis for municipal investment decisions and guidance in revealing the critical issues in environmental questions and realizing what the weak points are in environmental performance.The MEA project is further developing the concept of municipal environmental auditing, which was originally designed by the EU as part of the Eco- Management and Auditing System. In this project, the concept has been revised to better suit the Baltic cities and their typical problems. The objective is to create, for the cities, a reliable, comprehensive and impartial method to be used in evaluating the state of the environment and environmental consequencies of their actions. The project will develop the means of evaluating the level of environmental awareness on the part of the citizenry and officials.
Furthermore, it will give insight into whether or not the level of knowledge enables reliable assessment of projects which bear an influence on the environment. The MEA will also help to make environmentally sustainable investment decisions in the municipalities, detect the critical environmental issues and reveal the weaknesses in the environmental behaviour of cities.
The main product of the project is a manual for MEA procedure as applicable to the Baltic cities. The manual will apart from providing guidelines for conducting MEAs in the Baltic cities, include a model for conducting environmental reviews and provide the basis for prioritizing environmental investments. The first drafts of the manual were presented to the steering group already in spring 1996. The manual was then tested in the second phase of the project: a pilot study performed in the City of Tallinn.
The project became operational in May 1996 when the project Office in Tallinn was opened and Associate Prof. Maire-Liis Hääl from the Tallinn Technical University and Kaia Hannus,M. Sc., from ESP Engineering started their work in coordinating the audits, which were to be carried out in various city districts and the among environmental officials in Tallinn.
The first stage of the auditing was to work out a basic understanding of environmental issues and problems affecting the City of Tallinn. This was done by an Initial Environmental Review, performed by environmental experts from the city of Helsinki. Each of four experts covered a certain field of their special expertise, among which were: the aquatic environment including water protection issues, emissions to the air and air quality, waste production and handling etc. The Initial Environmental Review was therefore intended to provide the background for the work connected with a later stage of auditing: The Audit of Environmental Performance. The Initial Review covered all the environmentally important areas, bringing into focus the main problems, which were then addressed in the Audit of Environmental Performance.
Dissemination of MEA results
The auditing was carried out during the summer and autumn of 1996 and the experiences gained were transferred to the manual draft. By the beginning of this year, the project was ready to start the final stage: the dissemination of the model to the Baltic Cities.The whole Baltic MEA-project is regarded as a significant and valuable tool in the city management, but only efficient dissemination can make the results advatageous to all cities in the Baltic Sea region. To ensure this, the Baltic cities are asked to participate in this dissemination. A letter concerning this has been sent to the mayors of the UBC member cities.
The dissemination phase will start with seminars arranged in selected cities in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia. The seminars will last for two to three days in each city and will be arranged in April - June 1997. The seminars are national in scope and the training material is to be prepared in the language of each country involved.
UBC will take care of all issues concerning the training programme and the invitation of participants to the seminars. The MEA model will be introduced for the first time in the UBC's Commission of Environment Training Work Shop in Tallinn 18- 19 April 1997. The invitation to this workshop will be sent separately to member cities by UBC's Commission on Environment.
For further information contact Mr Ilppo Vuorinen, Ms Antonia Sucksdorff-Selkämaa or Mr Olli Madekivi in the MEA-Office in Turku, fax: +358 2 253 8613.
