Russia and the EU must stop the NORD STREAM II ecologic catastrophe in the Baltic sea

I suggest and beg of stopping the NORD STREAM II project until the Baltic sea is purged from the Chemical Weapons. I call the Russian Federation and the EU to provide urgent funding for the decontamination of the Baltic Sea in the spirit of the Paris Agreement and the European Commission priorities.

The issue of dumped munitions on the seafloor in European sea basins is a large-scale problem that merits appropriate attention. Those munitions do not only pose a threat to the marine environment, but can also pose a security threat, prevent the construction of new infrastructure and hinder blue growth.

There is a recognition that there is a large quantity of unexploded chemical munitions dumped at sea on the coastal seafloor with explosive material, as well as associated with shipwrecks, in the Baltic Sea. The location, quantity, and identity of such munitions were often poorly documented during disposal, and a lot of information may be as yet unknown. In addition, the compilation and understanding of available documentation is made difficult including because of political and language considerations and military classified restrictions. Furthermore, relocation of such munition, as well as spread of contaminants, can be caused by natural processes such as currents, as well as be anthropogenic-driven (such as encounters with trawling nets or dredgers). As a result of increasing use of the seafloor for economic purposes (e.g., offshore wind farms, sea cables, pipelines, for instance the NORD STREAM II, fisheries trawling operations), the risk of encountering sea-dumped munitions is increasing.

The NORD STREAM II also raises environmental concerns as, with the passage of time, the corrosion of ammunition casings due to mechanical and chemical processes may result in the release of chemicals contained in the munitions. Additionally, chemical munitions remain on the seabed far longer than originally believed. The variabilities associated with different mechanical and chemical processes (such as water depth, the temperature of the water and the depth of buried objects) that contribute to the rate of release of chemical agents from their original casings, results in difficult and inexact modelling of risk of release into seawater.

Therefore I suggest and beg of stopping the NORD STREAM II Project until the Baltic sea is purged from the Chemical Weapons. I call the Russian Federation and the EU to provide urgent funding for the decontamination of the Baltic Sea in the spirit of the Paris Agreement and the European Commission priorities.