Final Conference of the two-year COHIBA Project

How to Manage Hazardous Substances
in the Baltic Sea Region

The final conference of the project on the Control of Hazardous Substances in the Baltic Sea Region (COHIBA) was held on 11-12 October 2011 at Marina Congress Center in Helsinki, Finland. Over 140 participants from all Baltic Sea countries attended the conference representing national and local authorities, industry, researchers, NGOs and the media. The event provided an excellent opportunity to hear latest updates on the preliminary results of COHIBA, and to give feedback to the project team before publishing the final results in early 2012.

The results presented in the final conference will support the work in the Baltic Sea region countries on implementation of the hazardous substances segment of the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (2007-2021). The final conference gave chance to all the experts to discuss methods on identification of the problems of hazardous substances set in the Baltic Sea Action Plan, and solutions to  these problems.

In addition, the conference looked deeper into the main principles of the COHIBA project: to identify and measure the sources, inputs and pathways of hazardous substances in the Baltic Sea region, and to develop measures to prevent further contamination.

The programme of the Conference, including all presentations, is available here.

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More information about the themes and discussions at the conference, as well as background information about the COHIBA Project and the HELCOM BSAP could be derived from HELCOM press release about the event.

The Conference was preceded by the meeting of the Steering Group of the Priority Area 3 “To reduce the use and impact of hazardous substances” under the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea, led by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.