UN agrees to nine marine ecologically significant areas in the Baltic Sea

A final step for nine ecologically unique marine areas in the Baltic Sea to be included in a global registry was taken during the UN Biodiversity Conferenceheld in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt from 17 to 29 November 2018.
Altogether, the nine so-called Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs) cover 23 percent of the Baltic Sea waters. Five are transboundary areas, spanning over waters of two or more countries.
Describing these EBSAs was a commitment by HELCOM made at the UN Ocean Conference in New York in 2017, a pledge of the Baltic Sea region for advancing the ocean-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 14).
The new EBSAs were identified in Helsinki earlier in February 2018 during the Baltic EBSA workshop convened by the UN Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in collaboration with HELCOM, with financial support from Finland and Sweden.
According to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, also known as UN Biodiversity) that keeps the registry, EBSAs are "special areas in the ocean that serve important purposes, in one way or another, to support the healthy functioning of oceans and the many services that it provides." EBSAs are usually characterized by unique biological features.

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The full article can be found at helcom.fi