Programme

09:30 am

EU’s Sixht Environment Action Programme

The EU’s Sixth Environment Action Programme (EAP), ‘Environment 2010: Our future, Our choice’, includes Environment and Health as one of the four main target areas requiring greater effort – and air pollution is one of the issues highlighted in this area. The Sixth EAP aims to achieve levels of air quality that do not result in unacceptable impacts on, and risks to, human health and the environment.

The EU is acting at many levels to reduce exposure to air pollution: through EC legislation, through work at international level to reduce cross-border pollution, through co-operation with sectors responsible for air pollution, through national, regional authorities and NGOs, and through research. The Commission has recently launched the Clean Air For Europe (CAFE), which will lead to a thematic strategy setting out the objectives and measures for the next phase of air quality policy.

13:00 pm

National Board of Forestry

The Swedish government has requested the National Board of Forestry and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to continuously evaluate the effects on biodiversity of the new forest policy. The above-mentioned authorities conduct this evaluation through the SMILE project - Environmental Effects of Forestry.

The first report from this project has recently been presented. The report demonstrates that important inputs are being made in forestry in order to achieve the environmental target. In many respects the development is positive. However, we still have not reached the environmental target. In order to achieve this there must be improvements in, for example, general consideration of the environment, at the same time as restoration inputs and the area of formally protected land and "voluntary set-asides" must increase considerably. The budget for protected forest areas has been raised considerably, and with regard to the short time that has elapsed since the new forest policy was decided it is natural that much still has to be achieved.

20:30 pm

Ozone hole - The descovery

Folklore has it that when the first measurements were taken in 1985, the drop in ozone levels in the stratosphere was so dramatic that at first the scientists thought their instruments were faulty. Replacement instruments were built and flown out, and it wasn't until they confirmed the earlier measurements, several months later, that the ozone depletion observed was accepted as genuine.

 

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