Rewetting drained land could help in the fight against climate change but the EU's agricultural subsidies scheme currently favours the use of drained land.
Estonian Green Movement: protect the environment in Estonia and beyond baltictimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from baltictimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The carbon footprint of Estonia's drained landscapes is comparable to that of our whole transport industry. Nevertheless, Estonian forestry and agriculture today are mainly dependent on drainage systems built over the past century. Restoring peatlands and reconstructing drainage systems is difficult to reconcile, experts say.
The construction of the Nord Stream pipelines breached international environmental law's precautionary principle and ecosystem approach. In addition, in the aftermath of the Second World War about 230,000 tons of chemical weapons were dumped into the Baltic Sea and the Skagerrak Strait at sites near the current Nord Stream gas pipelines, writes Alexander Lott, a fellow at the Norwegian Center for the Law of the Sea and lecturer in administrative law at the University of Tartu.