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Environmental Protection in Estonia

Contents:

Favourable sparseness of population

Estonia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in Europe, with an average of 35 people per sq. km, only Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden have fewer people. The proportions of urban and rural populations have inverted during this century — nowadays 71 per cent of the population lives in urban centres. However, there are only five towns with more than 50,000 residents, while the capital and its outskirts are homes to half a million people, or about one third of the total population.

A northern climate with light and moderately warm days in summer and mild winters, an abundance of forests, moors, marshes and lakes, are the features Estonia shares with other Nordic Countries.

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Diversity of species

The comparative sparseness of the population and a mosaic of small fields contribute to the preservation of a diversity of species. If, for example, one tells someone from Central or Western Europe, that there are about one thousand lynx, six hundred brown bears and five hundred wolves in Estonia, the most common reactions are either a request to repeat the numbers, reduce them tenfold, or, alternatively, the questioning gaze usually reserved for huntsmen’s fibs. It is true, however, and Estonian naturalists are rather worried by the numbers. Their concern is not that the large carnivores pose a danger to humans but more for the other forest dwellers, and to some extent for the damage done to agriculture.

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Pioneering conservation projects

Classical ideas of wildlife conservation, influenced by the pioneering work done in Germany, spread to Estonia about a hundred years ago. The first conservation area in Estonia was founded for sea-birds on the small islets off the western coast of Saaremaa (Ösel) in 1910. The reserve has expanded a lot since then and has been renamed the Vilsandi National Park. Although the Estonian parliament managed to pass an Nature Protection Act in 1938, the Soviet occupation truncated any development in the field until 1958, when the means to ensure wildlife conservation were embodied in law once again, this time the first in the Soviet Union. The nature preservation system has gradually improved since then, in particular after independence in 1991, in extending protection to new species under protection and in enlarging the existing reserves and founding new ones. Today, the areas under various forms of protection total more than ten per cent of Estonian territory.

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From wildlife to environmental protection

Although it is possible to observe conflicts between human activities and nature in the past, the problem reached a new scale with mass industrialisation of the second half of the last century. The excited reaction of the local press at the increasing pollution of Tallinn’s beaches a century ago, when the city’s population grew rapidly, serves as an example.

The result of the opening in 1938 of a new pulp mill in Kehra, on the river Jägala, was a flow of dead fish floating downstream for three days and the river remaining lifeless for over fifty years. However, at that time this was considered to be merely a local issue, a common attitude world-wide before the industrial boom in the 1950s. By then Estonia had already become a part of the Soviet Northwest and the interests of the greater region were considered to be predominant. In the field of economy this resulted in a mass of heavy industry and, in the field of defence policy, in establishing a whole range of military bases all over Estonia. Local authorities rarely had any information whatsoever about the highly classified activities of the military, and thus no way to monitor the state of the environment on or around the bases until the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in the summer of 1994. From the seventies, the official policy of Soviet agriculture became one of bringing together stock into large specialised farm-complexes, which, together with widespread negligence, caused environmental problems all over the country. The same period saw the construction of the first ‘industrial’ residential areas with their characteristically poor environs.

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Expanding environmental conciousness

On the other hand, it was in the ’ 70s that local officials gained their chance to do something to improve the state of the environment. Some of the attempts turned out rather successfully — for example the founding of Lahemaa National Park as a ‘buffer zone’ in between the two large industrial areas of Tallinn and north-eastern Estonia — but that could not stop the general deterioration. However, this deterioration gave rise to a peculiar offshoot of Estonia’s expanding environmental consciousness. As part of a direct action campaign the issue of environmental protection came to be used as a protective shield behind which to re-develop a national identity, which in turn fostered protests against ongoing colonisation. The trigger was the outbreak of the so-called ‘phosphorite war’ in the spring of 1987, in which environmental arguments were central in quashing plans for a huge opencast phosphorite mine in Virumaa. And what was more important, it united people for the first time during the occupation in a common cause, becoming a premise for the ‘singing revolution’ which was to follow the year after.

Unfortunately Estonians’ environmental consciousness, as in other post-socialist nations, started to wane upon encountering the new realities of the transition period. There were objective reasons which contributed to this trend, as catering for primary needs in the altered conditions required a lot of energy and a gift for adaptation. On the other hand, it was the opportunity to fulfil years old desires in the burgeoning market economy, which led to the consumer mentality and pushed environmental issues into the background.

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Reorganisation of environmental protection

After re-establishing her independence, Estonia had to reorganise her environment protection as well. In order to do that, the Ministry of Environment was founded and granted far-reaching powers, the breadth of which are matched only in Poland, Denmark and Luxembourg.

As a matter of course, the first task for the reorganised department was to introduce new environmental legislation, suited to a market economy. This work is now almost complete, but in order to harmonise the older statutes with corresponding European Union norms, another round of the legislative process is needed. In the spirit of the Rio de Janeiro Conventions and in order to steer development towards a more sustainable course, in 1995 the Estonian parliament adopted the Act on Sustainable Development, probably one of the first of its kind in the world. Of late the parliament passed legislation on Estonian National Environmental Strategy as well. The Environment Monitoring Act, currently under debate, is intended to impose controls on the implementation of current legislation, which has been a problem for Estonia as for the rest of the transition economies. In the near future, a number of international treaties and the coming accession negotiations with the European Union, may well pose many difficult problems for Estonian environmentalists. These problems can only be solved by eliminating the causes of the processes detrimental to the environment, not by fighting the consequences of those processes.

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The problems

For several decades, the greatest contributor to pollution in Estonia has been the oil-shale based power industry. In spite of the decline in the economy over the last five years, which has reduced both the production of power and concomitant pollution, Estonia still occupies a place among the worst polluters in the world in terms of SO2 and CO2 emission and is among the biggest consumers of industrial water per capita. The future of the power industry in Estonia has become a focus of public debate, in which environmental issues are fully recognised. The best solution, as it appears now, would probably be to freeze the amount of oil-shale based energy production at its current level followed by a gradual reduction coupled with an increasing use of alternative sources of energy (wood, peat, wind etc.). The use of gas, could also be increased, and taken together, the use of these ‘cleaner fuels’ would reduce the need to invest in expensive waste treatment.

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Protecting the Baltic

Another environmental problem spot, during the last decades, has been the Baltic Sea, which, being shallow, is very susceptible to pollution. The need for international co-operation in protecting it led to the founding of the Helsinki Committee 25 years ago. This forum draws together the nations from around the Baltic’s shores, but its resolutions are no more than recommendatory. As it is well-nigh impossible to substantially curb the output of wastewater in the near future, the solution has to be the construction of wastewater treatment facilities. In recent years Estonia has managed to reduce the gap between herself and her western neighbours in that field. At present, all the larger towns have their own wastewater treatment systems in operation or near completion, and there are many treatment plants under construction in smaller centres. The considerable progress in this area is largely due to prompt and substantial aid from Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, coupled with local expertise in making purposeful use of it.

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Military pollution and subsoil water

The third sphere to suffer under Estonia’s inherited problems is that connected to the subsoil water. Although the state of groundwater has improved with the decline of large scale agriculture production, which involved extensive use of fertilisers, the situation is still far from satisfactory.

Even more hazardous for the groundwater is the pollution left behind by the Soviet army. The fact that the wells around large military airfields are heavily contaminated, has been known for some time, but we are only now realising the full extent of the pollution. The cleaning programme started with Danish aid at Tapa airfield, has extracted over hundred tons of kerosene from the groundwater, and it has been estimated, that between four and ten times as much is still to be pumped out from the adjacent six square kilometres. The kerosene in the wells is jet fuel intended for training flights, apparently dumped in the wells because Soviet military regulations did not allow for any excess fuel. Apart from kerosene, the groundwater around the former military sites is also contaminated with different toxic components of missile fuel.

The military pollution is not only confined to the groundwater. At many artillery and bombing ranges operations are scheduled or already underway to remove the tonnes of unexploded ordnance scattered across the sites.

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Signs of improvement

However, one can also find more positive examples in the field of environmental protection in Estonia. Ten years ago the pipes of a cement plant at Kunda, about a hundred kilometres east of Tallinn, emitted up to 100 thousand tons of dust annually, covering the town with a thick and omnipresent white layer. The factory was among the first to be privatised after independence in 1991, and was at once faced with heavy pollution fines threatening it with bankruptcy. That would have rid Kunda’s inhabitants of dust, but also of jobs, as the factory was the only major employer in the town. Finally a compromise was reached, under which the Ministry of Environment waived the pollution fines, the local people agreed to endure the dust for two more years, and the new owners pledged to invest eight million USD in waste treatment. All parties to compromise have stood by their word and probably achieved the best.

Andres Tarand

7) During the last five years, Estonia has signed, ratified and acceded to more than 40 bilateral and multilateral environmental agreements and conventions.

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Useful Links

• Estonian Environmental Home Page
• Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) in Estonia
• The Baltic Sea Environment
• Friends of the Earth-Estonia
• Estonia 21 - Sustainable Development in Estonia
• Protected areas in Estonia
• Estonian Ministry of Environment
• Stockholm Environment Institute

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The Estonia Page > Nature

This fact sheet is published by the Estonian Institute in July, 1997 and is intended to be used for reference purposes. It may be freely used in preparing articles, speeches, broadcasts, etc. No acknowledgement is necessary.