Tale på toppmøtet i Østersjørådet

Mr. Chairman, Dear Colleagues,

Since the establishment of the Council of Baltic Sea States, we have witnessed great progress in the region. And our ties of cooperation have become closer.

Poland and the three Baltic states have joined both the European Union and NATO.

And we have developed our cooperation with Russia and the other countries in the region.

At the same time, these developments have had consequences for the Council of Baltic Sea States.

Facing new challenges, reform of the organisation and its secretariat is necessary.

I would like to commend Sweden for initiating a reform process, and I would like to thank the present presidency, Latvia, for its leadership in bringing it forward.

I am confident that Denmark’s upcoming presidency will succeed in implementing the first phase.

I am pleased that our new priority areas are closely linked to the priorities in the Northern Dimension.

It is important to see the reform in a broader perspective. The Nordic, Barents, Arctic, and Baltic councils should complement each other, and must cooperate closely.

Mr Chairman,

Please allow me to make a few comments on two of the agreed priorities – energy and environment.

Many of the most interesting and challenging questions we face in the Baltic Sea region are related to energy. Both producers and consumers want stable, secure and predictable markets.

The Baltic Sea Region Energy Cooperation has a key role to play in strengthening partnerships in the energy sector.

Norway supports the proposals for strengthened cooperation and we will provide our share of the financing of future activities.

The ministerial meeting in Copenhagen in September should highlight the importance of regional energy cooperation for tackling many of the energy issues on the political agenda.

It is important to secure energy supplies, promote economic growth and combat climate change.

Environmental degradation and climate change constitute major challenges for the Baltic Sea region and for the world.

The Baltic Sea has serious ecological problems, and they must be dealt with.

And in the northernmost part of our region, in the Arctic, climate change is taking place twice as fast as elsewhere in the world.

In near future the North Pole may be ice-free during summer.

It is of utmost importance that we tackle the challenge of climate change.

We need to finalise a new agreement in Copenhagen in 2009. A new and more ambitious agreement – with more countries participating.

Our region has an important role to play in overall global efforts to combat climate change.

The Climate Change Conference in Poznan in December will be important. The outcome of the conference will be decisive for success in Copenhagen next year. It will be a yardstick for how far we have come and what remains to be done.

Important sectors like air and maritime transport and forestry are not covered by the existing climate agreement. They must be included in a new agreement.

New technology will be important, and we must intensify our efforts to develop the clean and renewable energy technologies of the future.

But a significant part of the increased demand for energy will still be met by fossil fuels.

And this means that any strategy for limiting CO2 emissions must include carbon capture and storage. As the world’s third largest oil and gas exporting nation, Norway feels a special responsibility.

Norway has significant practical experience with CO2 storage, having safely stored 10 million tonnes of CO2 from the Sleipner field in the North Sea since 1996. And we are investing in new projects to further develop Carbon Capture and Storage technologies.  This technology could also be used for coal-fired power plants.

Mr Chairman,

We have to seize the opportunity provided by the Climate Change Conference in Poznan to make progress. We look forward to further cooperation with all of you in the future efforts to reach a comprehensive international climate agreement.

Let us join forces and make sure that Copenhagen 2009 is a success.

It is our future that is at stake.