European Environment Agency (EEA) express strong interest in BALLERINA as an environmental Special Interest Network

Minutes from Meeting at European Environment Agency, Copenhagen, 10/7 1996

Attendees:

• EEA
  • Mr. Domingo Jimenez- Beltran, Director
  • Mr. David Stanners, Programme Manager
  • Mr. Jef Maes, Programme Manager
  • Mr. Ernst R. Klatte, Communications Officer
  • Mr. Niels Thyssen, Project Manager Inland Waters
  • Mr. Jef Maes, Programme Manager
  • Mr. Hannu Saarenmaa, IT Manager
  • Mr. Vangelis Papathanassiou, Project Manager for European Topical Centre/Marine and Coastal
  • Mr. Ingvar Andersson, Project Manager Dissemination of existing information
• BALLERINA
  • Ms. Britt Hägerhäll- Aniansson, Editor, member of BALLERINA ISC
  • Mr. Bertil Hägerhäll, Consultant, representing BALLERINA ISC
  • Mr. Fredrik Wulff, Stockholm Centre for Marine Research, Stockholm University, representing BALLERINA ISC
  • Mr. Sindre Langaas, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, BALLERINA Interim Steering Committee, Drafter of Minutes

Scope of Meeting:

1. Inform about the BALLERINA concept and the outcomes of the BALLERINA Workshop

2. Discuss interfaces and mutual benefits between EEA & EIONET and BALLERINA

3. Examine possibilities for various kinds of support

Outcome:

Director Domingo Jimenez-Beltran opened the meeting and gave a thorough introduction to EEA and the wider European Environmental Information and Observation Network (EIONET). The purpose of EEA is to provide the European Community, the EEA member states and the wider Europe with objective, reliable and comparable information at European level enabling the countries to take the requisite measures to protect the environment, to assess the results of such measures and to ensure that the public is properly informed about the state of the environment. Jimenez-Beltran stressed that the idea of EEA was not to implement any new monitoring programmes, and to take over environmental data and information activities already in existence in Europe. Rather, the idea a was to build upon and complement such already existing activities, by aggregating and analysing these data in partnership with responsible institutions and bodies, in order to generate new information for European wide decisions on environmental issues. The current EEA focus upon clearly defined products (reports) requested by the Commission, the EEA Member States, or the Environment for Europe Conferences has strong implications upon their work approach. He further stressed that while the current focus had been on state of the environment reporting and reporting of trends, the goal in the future was to go much deeper into prognosis and scenario building.

He welcomed the BALLERINA representatives, and expressed that they (EEA) had lately started to discuss the issue of so-called Special Interest Networks (SIN) coupled to the EIONET. They looked upon BALLERINA as an environmental Special Interest Network, and as such welcomed the initiative.

Mr. Langaas presented the brief history of BALLERINA, and expressed the strong influence of the Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN) upon the initial conceptual development of BALLERINA. He also mentioned some very clear differences between the two regions, in the BALLERINA context most explicitly seen in the number of institutions and persons connected to Internet in the various countries in the region. The main conclusions from the recent BALLERINA Workshop held in Stockholm, 13-14 June were presented. Emphasis was given to a some key characteristics of BALLERINA:

• A Special Interest Network (SIN) for institutions publishing environmental information about the Baltic Sea region on Internet
• A co-operative voluntary effort based upon institutional partnership
• Agenda 21 as the ideological framework
• For the end-user, whether decision-maker, scientist, school pupils, the most useful result will be the planned BALLERINA home page, acting as a 'switchboard' for on-line environmental information from the region complemented by Search facilities and Discussion Fora.
• The content of BALLERINA will essentially not be more than what partnership institutions publish on-line, mostly for other purposes, one can therefore expect a different degrees of coverage for different various topics
• Geographic focus upon the aggregated levels; the entire Baltic Sea (and drainage basin), the seven major sub-basins (and catchment areas), countries, and important transboundary regions.
• Topical focus upon Baltic Sea environmental issues, including nutrient pollution & eutrophication, but also on environmental issues within the drainage area not connected directly to the Baltic Sea itself as biodiversity and technological risks, such as nuclear power plants, and finally the wider sustainable development issues stretching into economy and policy-making.

Mr. Langaas said that the BALLERINA Interim Steering Committee considered the partnership with EEA of great importance, and felt that the different frameworks and approaches of EEA and EIONET and BALLERINA, respectively, would ensure a high degree of complementarity.

Following these introductory presentations, a clarification round continued.

• The issue was raised whether BALLERINA could be expected to provide a regional environmental assessment of the Baltic Sea region. It was stated that this was not to be expected since the information contributions from various institutions would be voluntary and frequently targeting a specific user category.
• The relationship with the European Topical Centre/Marine and Coast was brought up. After some consideration this was seen as a non issue given the very different 'formats' and work approaches of the ETC/MC and BALLERINA.
• The more general issue of SINs within the context of EIONET was discussed. A Special Interest Network (SIN) has been defined as a set of network sites ("nodes") that collaborate to provide a complete range of information activities on a particular topic. It was stated that the flexibility and dynamism generally available in SINs are to certain extent missing in the Internet component of EIONET. Therefore, the experiences that will be gained by the BALLERINA SIN will be very interesting for EEA to follow, in particular the connection to EIONET.

Possible funding opportunities were suggested within the European Commission, and other advices on funding were given.

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