International Conference “SOIL DEGRADATION Riga 2009”
The first International Conference in the Baltic countries "Soil Degradation, Riga 2009" organized by VentEko Ltd. and the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Latvia and with the support of United Nations Development Programme and University of Latvia took place in Riga on 17 – 19 February 2009. The Conference assembled more then 100 representatives from European Commission Joint Research Centre, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Canada, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Kurdistan, Israel, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Finland and Baltic Countries – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
The topics of the Conference inspired not only by their theoretical richness and wide variety of contemporary and sophisticated technological approaches but was important input for policy and decision makers, as well. Presentations and discussions of the first day covered international, EU and national strategies, legislation and implementation programmes. For Baltic countries it was important to raise and maintain the question about importance of soil acidification as one of degradation modes. The second session involved the most variety of topics – survey, monitoring and investigation of soil quality and pollution, environmental risk assessment approaches and results on EU, national and local level. During the third session on soil remediation and recultivation the most important input was done by experts of VentEko Ltd. who have more then 25 years experience on this matter. Very impressive presentations were provided by "Carus Remediation Technologies" (Italy), Dresden Technical University (Germany) and "Dekonta" (Czech Republic).
Publications and abstracts of the presentations of more then 100 authors are compiled in the conference proceedings.
The conference facilitated exchange of knowledge, best practices and experiences between policy and decision makers, environment experts, representatives of scientific and research community and practitioners on soil degradation problems and possibilities of their solutions. Regardless of diversity of soil degradation modes in different places of the Globe exchange of information facilitated understanding of each other and importance of the problems, motivated participants to new solutions and approaches. It was a good opportunity to develop new contacts and to start cooperation with new partners. Besides scientific and practical benefits the conference was remarkable contribution of Latvian Environment protection sector to implementation of Latvian Development and Cooperation policy and European Community Neighbourhood policy. It showed our good will regardless the financial conditions.
