26. May 1997, Press Release: BALLERINA First Annual Conference Held

RIGA -- ABOUT EIGHTY REPRESENTATIVES FROM ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS and information providers of the Baltic Sea Region participated in the first annual BALLERINA conference held on May 22-23 in Old Riga. The two-day conference represented the first meeting of BALLERINA cooperative members and supporters since a workshop held in Stockholm in June 1996. BALLERINA stands for Baltic Sea Region On-Line Environmental Information Resources for Internet Access. It is a co-operative effort to provide comprehensive information on-line. BALLERINA serves as a gateway and guide to a broad spectrum of information resources on environmental and natural resource issues and sustainable development issues in the region. At the conference, oral and poster presentations showed the wide range of existing environmental information available on the Internet in the region. Additional working sessions focused on three topics 1) an analysis of the contents and design of BALLERINA to date 2) the institutional development of BALLERINA 3) how to build Internet capacity in the eastern states of the Baltic region. The acting lead parties of UNEP/GRID-Arendal and Stockholm Marine Research Centre (SMF) and an advisory board of 12 members was elected for a three-year period at the conference. The advisory board represents both geographically and institutionally BALLERINA's diversity in the region. The target audience of BALLERINA is the environmentally concerned of the Baltic Sea Region, ranging from students to the professional environmental management community and scientists. The conference was organized by the BALLERINA Interim Steering Committee in cooperation with the Latvian Fund for Nature. BALLERINA is financially supported by the European Environment Agency, the Ministries of Environment in Norway and Sweden, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. BALLERINA can be visited at http://www.baltic-region.net/ For further information, contact Dr. Sindre Langaas, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, BALLERINA network coordinator Phone: +46-8-161737. E-mail: langaas@grida.no; or contact Ms. Britt Hagerhall Aniansson, BALLERINA Editor, Stockholm Marine Research Centre. Phone: +46-8-161727. E-mail: ballerina@smf.su.se (Transboundary Environmental Information Agency, St. Petersburg, Russia) For more information about the BALLERINA Initiative, please go to About BALLERINA below. A brief Conference Report is under preparation. This will also appear under the About BALLERINA section in June.

Revised: 26 May, 1997 Maintained by Britt Hägerhäll Aniansson, ballerina@smf.su.se