Denmark is very small country; we have a population of around 5.5 million and the
area's 44,000 square kilometre. And Denmark has a special situation that two-third
of the area is actively used for agriculture purposes and the other thing
which is special for Denmark is that all our drinking water is actually
coming from groundwater what is, worldwide, a very special situation.
Very few countries have that kind of situation and of it course means
that we care a lot for the groundwater and also from the perspective of
agriculture, it both economically benefit for Denmark but on the other hand
there will also be environmental issues related to agriculture in modern society.
The legislation in Denmark is very much linked to the EU, so we i general follow the
EU regulation and most of our
environmental laws in Denmark, they of course are connected to what is done
in the EU countries. As a very good example, we have the EU Water Framework
Directive, which is implemented in Denmark and it plays a major role for
the way we manage our water resources. If we look at Denmark and the
way we manage the environment in general Denmark can be divided, from this point
of view, into three levels: we have the state level, we have the regional level,
and we have the municipalities. We have around 98 municipalities in Denmark, five
regions and, of course, one state. And the municipalities, they are in principle
doing all the daily management, so they can take care of wastewater discharges,
water supply, all kind of things about the management of our environmental laws.
The framework, it's given by the state, so the regulations, the laws are on the
state level. Then, we have the regions and their main responsibility is related to
contaminated sites, so they are not involved in many other things but they
are very much...
they are in charge, when we're talking about contaminated sites and the risk to
groundwater or to other kind of problems related to contaminated sites.
If you look at the agriculture and the use of both nutrients and pesticides,
then Denmark is a modern society and it's a highly industrialized agriculture that
we have in Denmark,
very productive and they can only be so productive because they use both
nutrients and they use pesticides. Of course, this will give us some challenges.
For the new nutrients, we have eutrophication, we have issues with our water environmental in general,
and for pesticides, it's both for the terrestrial environment but it's also for the water
resources. So, all the time we need a kind of trade off between how we make
the environment
safe on the one hand and on the other hand it's important that we still have a
production and we are able to produce in a cost-effective way. It's a big
debate in Denmark. We have a very strict regulation and it might be that
the regulation is actually more tight, more strict, compared to other European
countries and our competitors in the world market. And this, of course,
is debated - we have a very high interest, in society, for buying
ecological food and other things on the one hand and on the other hand we need this
export. So, there we have something that we need to balance and this is
absolutely one of the main challenges we have right now. The other issue I'd like to
mention is related to the contaminated sites. It can be old landfills,
it can be former gasoline sites, dry cleaning facilities' landfills, it can be
old dumpsites. And in these sites - we have a huge number in Denmark - we have
mapped these sites for many years and today we have around 30,000
sites, which means that with all these sites, we are simply not able to remediate all
of them, so we need to do very detailed risk assessment, to make sure that if
we do something on that sites, it's because they really pose a risk. The risk could be
towards groundwater, it could be the area usage,
if there might be a problem with heavy metals or other compounds in
the soil or it could also be vapors going into houses. So, this management of
contaminated sites, is a major issue and as I mentioned it previously, it relate to
the regions, because they have a responsibility for doing this. So, that's
also a big challenge and a concrete example on this is related to a former
dumpsite at the west coast, in the northern part of Denmark.
A company formerly called Cheminova, they dumped - directly on the beach -
dumped a huge amount of chemicals and these chemicals, they've discharged them into the
sea and it has been a severe problem for many years and has been debated for
a long time, what to do about it. There's been several investigations and now we are at the
point - so it has been decided - we need to cope with this problem, we need to do
something. The question is what to do. And - as a part of this, in this case - we don't have any risk
towards groundwater, so, the people and the interest in this is not
related to our drinking water, it's related to the area usage, it's related
to tourists and a lot of other things. So, in order to balance this, it's important not only
to take into account the environmental issues, but also look into other discussions
related to societal benefits of doing something at the sites. And in order to do
this in a good way, we,
in Denmark, we have initiated to do workshops, do other things, where we have used
participation in this processes. So, we don't take decisions that has come
from the top-down decisions, but actually it's debated in the local society and
it's based, hopefully, on some kind of common agreement and if we can do that
then the decisions, in our opinion, will be the best and it'll be a good way to
proceed with this kind of big decisions, because they cost a lot of
money, and there will trade-offs in such decisions.
Henrik BregnhøjExt. Assoc. Prof.
Steffen Foss HansenAssociate Professor
