Baltic Compass project Regional Agenda on the role of River Basin Management Plans to limit the diffuse pollution from agriculture and safeguard the Baltic Sea was held in Tallinn on the 24th of May 2012.

The conference was organized by the Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre and brought together public officials, researchers and NGOs to discuss the options about reducing pollution load to water courses. The Regional Dialogue aimed to share the final results of the Baltic Compass case study on River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) in five Baltic Sea region countries (Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden). In addition to that water experts from Finland, Austria and USA introduced their work done in improving the management of water courses.

Finnish experiences on constructing wetlands was shared by Dr Kati Berninger (MJ-Prosessit Ltd.). Dr David Purkey (SEI US) introduced the application of water evaluation and planning system called WEAP and explained how the model could be useful in planning for the RBMPs. Thomas Dworak (Fresh Thoughts Consulting GmbH) made a presentation about linking the RBMPs measures with the Rural Development Plan (RDP) and pointed out some main findings from the comparative analyses between the RDP and RBMP measures in the EU member states.

Also, the Dialogue aimed to discuss how to improve communication between farmers and authorities, find out the problems in implementing monitoring systems and point out some suggestions for improvement of the Programme of Measures in RBMPs. These ideas were discussed in group sessions lead by Malgorzata Przyhodzka (Institute of Technology and Life Sciences, Poland), Sari Väisänen (Finnish Environment Institute) and Martin Larsson (Swedish University of Agriculture Science). The emerging findings and recommendation from the sessions can be found in the Summary of the Dialogue.

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