Baltic COMPASS

Title: Comprehensive Policy Actions and Investments in Sustainable Solutions in Agriculture in the Baltic Sea Region

Summary: Baltic Compass works with the agriculture and environment sectors to answer to the need for a transnational approach to reduce eutrophication of the Baltic Sea. It is aligned with respect to international frameworks, EU directives and the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP).

The identified challenge is, in particular, that the competence, technologies, policies and science for developing more sustainable solutions are available, but unevenly distributed in the BSR and thus not efficiently applied. The project improves the stakeholders' capacity to drive the change toward greener agriculture, along with the aim to streamline communication on different policy levels and to mitigate the perceived lack of trust between the environmental and agricultural sectors.

In short, Baltic COMPASS fosters win-win solutions for agriculture and environment and promotes the rural areas as drivers for sustainability. Baltic Compass contributes with knowledge sharing of existing methods and innovations, investment incubation, strategic risk assessment concerned with land use and animal husbandry, and policy adaptation. The project goals will be achieved via direct contacts and networking activities as well as through more systematic, policy and strategy relevant communication.

Project stakeholders are governments, farm advisory services, authorities, farmers, technology producers, scientific institutes, and in general everybody, who has an interest in sustainable agriculture in the Baltic Sea area. The concrete benefit for the farmers and decision-makers alike will be better access to decision support. The three-year project is regarded as a strategic project by the financier the EU Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013 for its contributions to investments and policy framework. It forms the cluster of agro-environment projects bridging priority areas 1 & 9 in EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region.

Baltic COMPASS underlines cooperation and complementarity with related projects, especially Baltic DEAL, Baltic MANURE and BERAS Implementation, and several other national and transnational initiatives.

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