Board Meeting
KIMO Sweden’s latest board meeting took place on 21 November. A new national coordinator was appointed: Karin Meyer at the Environment Administration, the City of Gothenburg. KIMO Sweden is currently working on an Action Plan on micro debris (small pollutant particles including but not limited to microplastics). The plan addresses the different ways that local municipalities can take action against micro debris ending up in the marine environment.
One important issue we discussed is how we can use public procurement as a tool to reduce micro debris. There were some discussions regarding the hosting of the KIMO AGM in 2017. The hosting will probably be a joint venture by a couple of municipalities in Scania in the southernmost Sweden although this will only be confirmed in early 2017. KIMO Sweden also accepted the offer from KIMO UK to get a Swedish version of their short animation on marine litter.
And in other related environmental news from across Sweden:
New Marine Research Centre to be established in Simrishamn
During the past year the Marint centrum (Marine center) advisory group, consisting of people from academia, industry and regional authorities and other stakeholders, has been working on a strategy to develop the Marint centrum. At the core of the plan is an interdisciplinary research centre led by the Centre for Environmental and Climate research (CEC) at Lund University. It will take Hanöbuktens as its starting point and will tackle both environmental issues and societal challenges linked to the sea.
Clean-up of hazardous wrecks
The Swedish Maritime Administration has identified 300 shipwrecks as environmental risks. The Swedish Agency for Water and Marine Management is now starting up the handling of potentially polluting shipwrecks with the clean-up of the fishing vessel Thetis.
Beach cleaning proposal
The Swedish Environmental Agency is proposing government funding of beach cleaning action on the west coast of Sweden. Up to 80 % of the material washed up on the west coast is from abroad which means that the local municipalities have very few means at their disposal to prevent this pollution from occurring in the first place.
Hannes Nilsson
Network Coordinator
KIMO Sweden
Note from the editor: Welcome to the new Swedish coordinator, Karin Meyer. Many thanks to Hannes for the hard work during his time as coordinator. We wish him all the best in his new role dealing with environmental issues in the Department of Urban Development and Spatial Planning.