Opinion: Integrate sailors into environmental protection, don't lock them out!
YACHT-Redaktion
· 17.12.2022
Dear readers,
This week, the news that Schleswig-Holstein's Environment Minister Tobias Goldschmidt from the Green Party is planning to connect the various nature and bird sanctuaries on the coast of his federal state to form a "Baltic Sea National Park" has been keeping us busy in the editorial office.
The map presented with the plans shows an area of around 140,000 hectares shaded in green as "large protected areas". This includes the German half of the Flensburg Fjord, the entire Schlei and the other coastal waters, with a few exceptions, such as the area of the Kiel Inner Fjord.
There is talk of zero-use areas in which not only fishing and water sports would be taboo, but the beaches would also be closed to walkers. And it sounds cynical when Goldschmidt argues that such a national park would promote the region's attractiveness as a "real flagship for the region" and therefore offer "enormous opportunities for tourism and the economy".
For sailing, the plans would primarily be associated with restrictions. From youth work and training to regatta events and overnight stays on board, all facets of the maritime culture that sailing represents in the land between the seas are affected.
It is clear that the Baltic Sea and its inhabitants urgently need protection. However, it is primarily pollutant inputs from agriculture and wastewater from cities and industry that are causing problems for the inland sea. It is eutrophying. This is what biologists call it when algae growth, fuelled by the inputs, leads to a lack of light and oxygen.
Since 2007, the neighbouring countries have joined forces in the Helsinki Commission to work against this. However, the desired success is still a long time coming. Although successes have been achieved in several countries through measures such as artificial reefs and fish stocks and harbour porpoise populations have recovered in recent years, the algae problem remains unresolved.
While discussing the news from the state capital, we realised that we have been reporting on this topic in YACHT for many years. Not only in connection with the Baltic Sea. The protection of the oceans is regularly one of our most important topics.
In my sailing environment, too, I have noticed that more and more importance is being placed on a conscious approach to the natural world in which we live. Which we also regard as our living space when we entrust ourselves to it while sailing.
Isn't it much more sensible to win people over to nature conservation by raising this awareness than to shut them out? I believe that basing nature conservation projects on the assumption that nature and people are mutually exclusive does not help but harm the right and important cause.
One can only hope that this view will be heard in the "open-ended dialogue process" with "local stakeholders" and "nature conservation" announced by the Minister. And that maritime culture is understood as part of the areas to be protected, and not as a contradiction.
Lasse Johannsen,Editor YACHT
The week in pictures:
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