Nordic Region tackles environmental challenges

Discover the Arctic Preparedness Platform for oil spills and other environmental problems

APP4SEA Project is financed under the INTERREG program of the EU. Its main aim is to strengthen the competences of the countries in the Nordic Region against oil spills and different environmental problems caused by climate change. The project is ongoing and has partners in Finland, Scotland, Norway and Iceland.

Climate change brings the Nordic Region to the forefront of oil exploitation

For the last few decades, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer which allows for more ships to pass through it. Subsequently, this increases the risk of different kinds of environmental dangers to the ocean, its flora and fauna as well as the cultural heritage along the coast of the countries involved. What is more, there is a huge amount of gas and oil reserves which are now available for exploitation, increasing the risk of oil spills. 

The project aims to create a pool of experts that will share best practices from their respective countries, will train other experts to deal with certain problems, raise awareness in their respective regions and ultimately create an open-access map that will show the search and rescue centers, oil ships routes, the different weather zones, etc.

Some of the success of the project up to now can be summarized as follows:

• The project is a finalist in the Project Slam Competition. It was chosen as one of the 8 finalists out of 40 projects.
• Research has been conducted and a map created indicating the seabirds’ habitats and populations and where they can be most affected by oil spills. It is illustrated through examples from the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 when a few accidents happened involving potential oil spills.
• The map that has been the main objective of the project is already giving information for some past periods which provide crucial leads and guidelines to continue the in-depth research on how to manage future possible environmental dangers in the region.

The dangers in the waters of the Nordic Region are evident. However, projects like APP4SEA are creating a pool of information and bringing together experts that will work on mitigating these dangers through shared experience and best practices. The challenges of the 21^st century and the interest in the region imposed by some of the leaders in oil extraction are the main issues the project will tackle. In the next decades, this region will turn from a barely known and remote area into an arena and center of oil extraction and gas industry development. The need for preparedness and ready response to the environmental dangers is becoming more and more important.