This year’s Baltic Sea Day international environmental forum in St. Petersburg, held for the 13th time, brought a lot of positive attention towards Maritime Spatial Planning, along with other new approaches and tools for protection of the Baltic marine environment and development of the region. Interest to the event and its topics was shown with high-level representation of Russian federal authorities, including the Deputy Minister of Regional Development of the Russian Federation, Mr. Alexandr Victorov, who attended the opening of the round-table session on Maritime Spatial Planning.

Other round-table sessions also ignited eager discussions both in between the session presentations and corridor talks, for instance about greener agriculture and rural development, global economy and tourism, and the tri-lateral cooperation towards the Year of the Gulf of Finland 2014.

The Baltic Sea Days continues to attract representatives of the scientific and policy-developing communities across the Baltic. The event was organized by the “Ecology and Business”, a St. Petersburg Public Organization in cooperation with Russian authorities and other stakeholders.

In the picture: Leonid Korovin (left), Ecology and Business, host of the Forum; Monika Stankiewicz, HELCOM; and Alexandr Victorov (right), Deputy Minister of Regional Development of the Russian Federation.