Why we got involved

Mattias Klum and Folke Rydén are the founders of Our Baltic Sea Media Project.

Over the last 20 years, we have focused our attention on settings and cultures in faraway places. Now, we have decided to focus on the environment at our doorstep.

Because we are convinced; it is not until we are able to solve the urgent environmental issues at home that we gain the credibility to demand great measures globally.

When it comes to the Baltic Sea, we are faced by the contradiction between ominous images of doom on the one hand and the possibility to preserve a unique environment on the other. In the coming years, decisions and processes within science, academic research and politics will be of decisive importance to the future of our sea.

Over the next ten years, together with some of the leading experts in their respective fields – scientists, filmmakers, journalists and media professionals – we will document the efforts to save the Baltic Sea. It will be an overwhelming and dramatic time.

Our ambition is to get people to care. To discover and be touched. To influence and be influenced. We want our children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy a healthier sea.

To not care is to take a stand of decisive importance as well. And without information and knowledge, we risk making uninformed and risky decisions. It is us – the 90 million people living around the Baltic Sea – who decide what kind of sea we want. Extinct cod and algal blooms or clean water and biological diversity? The choice is ours.

We want coming generations to be proud over what we, the people around the sea, one day hope to accomplish: the beginning of the end of over fishing, dead sea beds, algal blooms and pollution. The starting-point of increased awareness, a healthier sea and a natural and wholesome environment.

If we can save the Baltic Sea, we should be able to save the world.

Mattias Klum & Folke Rydén
 Vätö, Sweden
 November 2007