Changing environment of the Baltic Sea should be recognized in the future resource management activities

Abstract

As is well known, the political balance of the Baltic Sea has spent restless times during the last years mainly due to its strategic position between east and west. Since the 1980s,
the rapidly changing situation has been a reality for the environmental condition of the sea as well. The reason for this has been the global climate change, which influences especially the exceptional characteristic of the Baltic Sea – the salinity content of the brackish seawater. The changing environment should be better recognized in the future management activities of the sea.

Full text

may 2018
ISSUE no. 2
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aleksi randell
Core Network
Corridors will
gain importance
as drivers of the
competitiveness
of the Baltic
region
anne berner
New
opportunities and
trends in Nordic
cooperation
Alexey Vedev
Economic
development of
Russia in 2017-
2018: A recovery-
driven unstable
growth
kyösti karvonen
Finland chooses
continuity

The Pan-European Institute publishes the
Baltic Rim Economies (BRE) review which deals
with the development of the Baltic Sea region. In
the BRE review, public and corporate decision
makers, representatives of Academia, as well as
several other experts contribute to the discussion.
ISSN 1459-9759
Editor-in-Chief | Kari Liuhto
(responsible for writer invitations)
Technical Editor | Terhi Luukkainen
University of Turku
Turku School of Economics
Pan-European Institute
Rehtorinpellonkatu 3
FI-20500 TURKU, Finland
Tel. +358 29 450 5000
www.utu./pei
bre@utu.
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Pan-European Institute

3
Baltic Rim Economies31.5.2018 ISSUE # 2
www.utu.fi/pei
expert articles
anne berner 4
New opportunities and trends in
Nordic cooperation
Aleksi Randell 5
Core Network Corridors will gain
importance as drivers of the
competitiveness of the Baltic region
Alexey Vedev 7
Economic development of Russia in
2017-2018: A recovery-driven
unstable growth
ville skinnari 8
Are we ready to head North?
timo hirvonen 9
Cooperation between the Finnish
and Swedish navies
peter stolt 10
Sweden’s and Finland’s deepened
defense cooperation
Jari sainio 11
The international cooperation of
Southwest Finland Emergency
Services in the Baltic Sea
jyri raitasalo 12
The clash of security perspectives
Galina Gavrilko 13
Militarization of the Baltic Sea
Region: Economic consequences
and scenarios for the development
of military and political confrontation
heidi fransila 16
Shared situational awareness is a
deterrent in the Baltic Sea Region
jaakko mikkola 17
Kymenlaakso: A region by the sea
and the EU external border
marita toikka 18
Kouvola: Perfect for growing logistics
operations
Jarosław Suchoples 19
Exploring potential of bilateral
contacts: Relations between Poland
and Finland nowadays
Jarno Syrjälä 20
New trends in the Finnish-Chinese
economic relations
Alexander Gremitskikh 21
St. Petersburg and Turku: A
time-tested friendship
Tomi Taipale 22
Could Lithuanian companies help
Finland achieve greater success?
IAROSLAV CHORNOGOR 24
Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian regional
partnership
Marc Lemaître 25
EU supporting cooperation across
borders in the Baltic Sea Region
Dagfinn Høybråten 26
Trust denes the Nordic countries
and brings them together
Tobias Etzold & Christian Opitz 27
More political relevance for Nordic
cooperation
Kari Ruohonen & Malla Paajanen 28
Helsinki Tallinn railway tunnel: Results
of the FinEst Link feasibility study
Allan Selirand 30
You know Estonia as an IT-country:
Wait till you nd out what else we can
oer
Paavo Virkkunen 31
Travel boom from China to Finland:
Coincidence or not?
Kyösti Karvonen 33
Finland chooses continuity
Mika Hentunen 34
Draining the swamp in Washington
means fewer diplomatic channels to
Baltic Rim countries
Manabu Senkogu 35
The Baltic States and Japan: What,
if any, are the possibilities of further
cooperation?
Madeleine Granvik 36
27 years of regional work:
The Baltic University Programme
Helene Carlbäck 37
Swedes in Russia: Narratives in change
John Christmas 38
Latvian narratives and the EBRD
Sergey Kalendzhyan 39
Business education in Russia: New
trends and perspectives
David Szakonyi 41
The eects of state capitalism on
Russia’s business environment
Csaba Weiner 42
Outward foreign direct investment by
Russian MNEs: Focus on
home-country push factors, Europe and
ve CEE countries
Sergei F. Sutyrin & Serafima Khatkevich 44
Wind of change: New opportunities
for Finnish-Russian energy
cooperation
Katriina Valli 46
The future of machine learning and
advanced analytics: Finland and Russia
perspective
Ekaterina Tarasova 48
On recent anti-nuclear movements
in Russia
Laura Klemetti 49
From Putin to people: Perspectives
on the Russian hydrocarbon age
Azat Rakhmanov 51
Business elites of the Baltic Sea
region
Irina Dezhina 52
Russian innovation system in the
digital era
Meelis Kitsing 53
Regulation of digital platforms in
Europe: A stumbling block or a
building block?
Irene Malgina 54
Digital economy: The case of
Belarus
Kari Perälä & Jukka Partinen 55
Project of uency cross-border car
trac on South-East of Finland
Minna Säpyskä-Aalto 56
The hunt for cross-border startups
Martin Korpi 57
Immigration and the Swedish labor
market
Jari Hänninen 58
Changing environment of the Baltic
Sea should be recognized in the
future resource management activities
Lauri Paltemaa 59
Finnish economic relations with
China: Trends and risks
Sun Yan 60
China-CEE cooperation and China-
EU relationship: Background, progress
and outcomes
Jukka Aukia 62
China’s 16+1 platform and
the Baltic States

58
Baltic Rim Economies31.5.2018 ISSUE # 2
www.utu.fi/pei
Jari Hänninen
Changing environment of the Baltic
Sea should be recognized in the future
resource management activities
As is well known, the political balance of the Baltic Sea has
spent restless times during the last years mainly due to its
strategic position between east and west. Since the 1980s,
the rapidly changing situation has been a reality for the
environmental condition of the sea as well. The reason for
this has been the global climate change, which inuences especially
the exceptional characteristic of the Baltic Sea – the salinity content
of the brackish seawater. The changing environment should be better
recognized in the future management activities of the sea.
Practically all the water in the Baltic Sea derives from the North
Atlantic Ocean. Salinity in the Baltic Sea is maintained by seawater
intrusions from the North Sea through the Danish Straits. Freshwater,
on the other hand, is rst evaporated in the Atlantic, after which it enters
the catchment area via precipitation and nally reaches the Baltic Sea
as river runos. Our research has shown that major oceanographic
events in the Baltic Sea, such as the reduced frequency of saline
water pulses, are regulated by increased river runo from the Baltic
Sea watershed. Anthropogenic changes in the climate over recent
decades have increased the precipitation in the Baltic catchment to
give a positive water balance, i.e. more fresh than saline water reaches
the Baltic Sea, and the surplus fresh water ows continuously out into
the North Sea, hindering saline water intrusions from the Atlantic at
the same time. These events have resulted in decreased seawater
salinity and further changes in the biodiversity of the sea as the
salinity of water is the ultimate controlling factor of faunal and oral
composition and distribution in the Baltic Sea. Regional modelling
exercises for the Baltic Sea have anticipated that the progress will
still continue for decades in the future. This newly developing Baltic
Sea ecosystem, originated in climate change and characterized by
reduced seawater salinity, will encourage invading species from the
relatively fresh waters of the Gulf of Finland and Bothnian Bay while
several seawater species simultaneously are expected to retreat
south-west, and some of them may even disappear from the Baltic
Sea.
Since coastal brackish water areas are central to the well-being of
several aquatic and marine species, some of which are commercially
important, the issue of an expected increase of freshwater runo
and decreased salinity in the northern Baltic Sea deserves attention.
This is especially important for management activities, especially in
sheries. In the Baltic Sea, freshening of the water has caused both
qualitative and quantitative changes in sh fauna due to changes in
the planktonic community, which further have changed the diet of the
most important commercial sh, the Baltic herring. As a result the
herring is starved and due to this we have demonstrated some 25%
decrease in body length in the northern Baltic Sea. This must aect
the energy ows and ecological interactions among the species in
the ecosystem, not to mention the consequences for the sheries
and sh processing industry. By now, the commercial sh catch in
the Baltic Sea is about 700,000 tons annually. The majority of the
catch consists of marine species: herring, sprat and cod. Of these,
herring will most likely retain its distribution and dominant position in
the pelagic ecosystem even in the northern sea areas, but its body
size will remain constantly small, keeping also the stock biomass low.
Modelling has anticipated that during the next 100 years, the other
marine sh species will gradually disappear from northern Baltic
Sea catches with the extension of the decreased salinity range from
north to south. For the shing industry the consequences of this
development will be problematic in the future.
Speculatively, a combination of physical, chemical, and biological
environmental changes may turn any one of above mentioned species
into a key species that will profoundly aect the ecology of its habitat.
We need a heightened, more sophisticated approach to monitoring
than exists currently. For example, the ecosystem approach of the
European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive, MSFD (2008)
could be a basis for development. The MSFD is intended to promote
sustainable use of the seas and conserve marine ecosystems. The
main objective is to reach and maintain Good Environmental Status
(GES) in Europe’s seas. GES is described by e.g. biological diversity.
We emphasize that with advancing climate change, salinity changes
are likely to aect the biodiversity of brackish water environments.
This should be accounted for in future monitoring program designs,
and these program designs need to be adapted accordingly.
Archipelago Research Institute (ARI) of the University of Turku is
the only university-level eld station at northern Baltic Sea possessing
research vessels and other long-term monitoring equipment for
marine ecological and oceanographic studies in the Archipelago
Sea. The time series collected at the station date back to the start
of regular environmental monitoring in Finland in early 1960s, and
have now continued unbroken more than 50 years. The long term
environmental data collected at the institute has been a basis for
developing the current status of the ARI as one of the leading institutes
in environmental long term data modelling directed to explain the
Baltic Sea ecosystem functioning. Our monitoring history has shown
that stable and regular observation of natural phenomena with xed
methods is the only way to reveal slowly occurring changes or eects
of abrupt disturbances in marine ecosystem.
Expert article • 2390
Jari Hänninen
Station Manager
Archipelago Research Institute
Biodiversity Unit
University of Turku
Finland
Email: jari.hanninen@utu.