The big cleanup begins

The countries bordering the Baltic Sea pledge to clean up what experts call the “most polluted sea in the world”, reports Helsingin Sanomat. At a Helsinki summit meeting of over 400 experts and NGO and business representatives convened by the Baltic Sea Action Group (BSAG, an independent foundation based in the Finnish capital), "The heads of state and representatives of the countries that share these waters pledged to reduce or eliminate waste disposal in the sea,” including detergents and fertilisers containing phosphates and nitrates, respectively. "The states are promising less than the organisations," however, regrets the Helsinki daily: in other words, public- and private-sector organisations are more committed to the cause than national governments. Turun Sanomat, the Finnish daily based in Turku, reports that Warsaw and Moscow pledge to build a “network of sewerage plants to reduce the discharge of polluted wastewater”. And over in Tallinn, the daily Postimees hails the Estonian announcement of a law "to protect the Baltic Sea environment from now to 2014".