Progress report for
Identification of Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSA) in the Baltic Sea
Achievement at a glance
The Baltic EBSA workshop was held on 24 February 2018, in Helsinki, Finland, hosted by Finland and with financial support by Finland and Sweden. The workshop was convened by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity in collaboration with HELCOM. The workshop was attended by experts from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Sweden, as well as from a number of organizations. Nine EBSAs in the Baltic Sea were described by the workshop. Five of these areas are transboundary areas, covering waters of two or more countries. Altogether, the described EBSAs cover 23% of the Baltic Sea waters. The EBSAs are expected to contribute to fulfilling the regional goal of drawing up and applying maritime spatial plans throughout the Baltic Sea region, which are coherent across borders and apply the ecosystem approach. The report of the Regional Workshop to Facilitate the Description of EBSAs in the Baltic Sea (EBSA workshop) was reviewed at the CBD Twenty-second meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA 22), 2-7 July 2018 in Montreal. The EBSA reports for the Baltic Sea were adopted at the Fourteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 14), 17-29 November 2018, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.The EBSA descriptions have been included in the global EBSA repository. In addition, Sweden hosted a regional EBSA workshop for the North East Atlantic in Stockholm in September 2019. Subsequently the report was forwarded to, where the identified areas was considered and the meeting requested the Executive Secretary of the CBD to include the summary reports in the EBSA repository, and to submit them to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and its relevant processes, as well as Parties, other Governments and relevant international organizations.
Beneficiaries
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