Human activities and nature conservation in the North Sea and Baltic Sea.
The seas: An untouched natural environment?
Pressures of human activity have grown so much in recent years that is easy to think of Germany’s marine areas as part of the economy rather than part of nature. The North Sea and the Baltic Sea today lead a conflicting, dual existence as an arena for economic activity and an ecologically valuable natural environment.
If we wish to keep the marine natural environment intact and pass on natural resources to future generations, then we must restrict our use of the seas to activities that are ecologically sustainable. This makes it necessary to identify and respect the sustainability limits of marine ecosystems, and to give consideration to those limits in all human activities. Ensuring that this happens – and resolving existing conflicts between activities – requires responsible, integrated marine regional planning. This represents a new challenge. Previously, regional planning in Germany was restricted to the mainland and the 12-mile zone, and was a responsibility of the German Länder. A major revision to the German Regional Planning Act (ROG) in 2004 assigned responsibility for regional planning in the EEZ to federal government, where the work is shared by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS) and the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH).
Extension of regional planning to the open seas will also form an important part of the Integrated Marine and Coastal Area Management (IMCAM) strategy that all EU member states are required to develop. The IMCAM strategy relates to species and habitat conservation, sustainable use and conflict management not just in coastal zones, but also notably in offshore marine areas.
A wide range of human activities affect the North Sea and Baltic Sea and create conflicts between human needs and the needs of nature. In coastal zones, the dominant impacts are from tourism, coastal management, and harbour and river engineering. In the open seas, such factors come second to other pressures. In marine habitats, nutrient cycles and flora and fauna are affected first and foremost by airborne and riverborne pollution, consisting of harmful substances from trade, industry and housing together with large quantities of nutrient pollution from farming, housing and transportation. Other uses of the seas can also significantly affect parts of the marine ecosystem.
These are the main human activities affecting the North Sea and the Baltic Sea:
Offshore wind farm