Radioactivity - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 61

This story begins with the creation in 1990 of the Nordic Environment Finance Cor-
poration (NEFCO). It is an international finance institution that was established in 1990
by the five Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - to help
arrange for capital investments related to addressing environmental issues in the Nord-
ic region. Its portfolio has now included environmental projects in Central and Eastern
European countries, including Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In 1994, NEFCO turned its
attention to environmental issues adjacent to the Nordic countries and set up the Barents
Region Environmental Programme to identify potential investment projects in the region.
Overallorganisation wascoordinatedbyasteeringgroupappointedbyNEFCOandconsis-
ted of members from the Russian regional environmental authorities, the ministries of de-
fence and of environment of the Russian Federation, Norway and Finland and the NEFCO
and the AMAP secretariat. AMAP was charged with setting up two expert groups to do
the work: one designed to address nonradioactive issues and the other to examine projects
concerning radioactivity.
The involvement of AMAP in this work was a little problematic for Lars-Otto, Lars-
Erik Liljelund and me (Lars-Erik and I were then vice chair and chair, respectively, of
AMAP). We were only authorized to work on activities included in the work plans agreed
on by the eight Arctic environment ministers at ministerial meetings. There was no pro-
cedure for changing our work plan between the two-year ministerial sessions. Getting in-
volved in remediation activities associated with redundant military equipment in Russia
was quite a significant step beyond the work we were expected to be undertaking. We came
up with the procedural solution of asking the AMAP working group if it had any objection
to the secretariat doing work that was supportive of Arctic environmental integrity, provid-
ing they had the person-power and budget to do it. No country objected and the secretariat
was on its way. The cooperation between AMAP and NEFCO marked the beginning of
a characteristic that has made AMAP so valuable to the Arctic Messenger and to Arctic
governments. Not only has AMAP proved to be able to identify Arctic environmental is-
sues, but it is also now sought after as a partner for the design and appraisal of practical
activities undertaken to address such issues. Linking these two objectives has strengthened