The aim of the workshop was to discuss and provide guidelines on how to make the BALLERINA initiative the gateway for environmental information on the Baltic Sea region on the Internet through the use of a series of World Wide Web pages with a coordinating function of the many existing information sources now available about the environment in the Baltic Sea region.

BALLERINA is being developed as a cooperative effort among agencies and organizations which produce and disseminate environmental information about the Baltic Sea and its drainage area. To an increasing extent, much information about the environmental state of the region is already available by Internet. Yet that same information is not easily visible or searchable from a single World Wide Web homepage location.

During the course of the two-day workshop, working groups discussed a series of aspects of the project, including institutional, informational, and financial dimensions. A wide variety of ideas and concrete proposals were presented by each of the working groups to the entire workshop. Representatives from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, and Sweden participated in the working groups of the workshop.

Several workshop participants presented existing examples of environmental work of their organizations on the Internet. Those organizations included the CIESIN Estonian Center, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, TallinNet, the Finnish Environment Institute, and the Regional Environmental Center (Budapest).

A representative from the Great Lakes Commission, Carol Ratza, presented the experience of the Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN). The BALLERINA initiative will be able to draw on the example of GLIN as a successful electronic network concerning the environmental issues of international waterbodies.

An ad hoc committee was designated and approved by the workshop for further organization and realization of the BALLERINA initiative. A first general assembly of BALLERINA participants is now planned for early 1997. The BALLERINA workshop was sponsored by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and UNEP/GRID.

For more information about the BALLERINA initiative, please contact Dr. Sindre Langaas, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, phone +46-8-161737, e-mail .

Internet: http://www.grida.no/ballerina/