Peep Mardiste

Estonian Green Movement - FoE

Green Forum (Estonian Green Movement-FoE AGM) and the Annual Meeting of EGM werer taking place in Keila, 13/02/2004.

Four topics were chosen for Green Forum in order to discuss problems with some of the most urgent environmental issues.

In forestry sector the situation in state-owned forests is quite

good. All state-owned forests have been certified with FSC

certificate and are managed sustainably. Management of private

forests is less controlled, the volume of timber felling is too big

and violation of tax laws is common practice.

There is increasing pressure for real estate developments in Estonian

natural coastal areas, islands and beautiful landscapes. Therefore

the Forum discussed ways how to protect natural values during spatial

planning processes. Involvement of local population and NGOs was in

center of discussion.

Estonian Green Movement-FoE also released its analysis on the

implementation of environmental policy of the current government.

During first 10 months in office it has fulfilled only some 1/3 of

its environmental promises for this period. Environmental statements

of the coalition agreement are lacking vision and ambition as it

mostly consists of activities anyway foreseen by agreements with the

EU.

ERL is acting as coordinator for Estonian sustainable consumption

coalition and during the Forum the activities of the coalition

partners were reported. Promotion of ecolabelling, energy saving and

general awareness raising were some of the measures taken in 2003.

Green forum in Keila; guest presentation by Toomas Trapido from Estonian Fund for Nature

Guest presentation by Olavi Tammemäe, Deputy Minister of Environment

Discussion, speaking Andres Tarand, member of Riigikogu

Presentation by Allan Kokkota, speaking about ecological footprint and sustainable consuming