Nordic Blue Parks- combining underwater natural and cultural heritage
This innovating project combines – for the first time – natural and cultural heritage and recreation – underwater!
The project’s idea of Nordic Blue Parks is a new concept that combines underwater nature trails, including cultural trails (on shipwreck and at other anthropogenic sites and constructions under water). Led by the Natural Heritage Services of Metsähallitus, this one year pilot project aims to formulate criteria and guidelines for sustainable blue trails and to set up trails to test this outreach concept. (Metsähallitus is a state enterprise of Finland, administering state-owned land and water.)
Although our underwater cultural heritage has been exceptionally well preserved throughout the centuries, these underwater secrets have been revealed and accessible to only a small group of sports divers with archaeological knowledge. A similar situation holds true for the underwater nature of the Nordic countries, where habitats and key species are still relatively unknown to the public at large.
What are the tasks of the Nordic Blue Parks project?
Because of the short duration of the pilot project in 2009, the immediate task of this endeavour is to use the existing underwater nature and cultural trails as examples.
In Finland, these include the Stora Hästö underwater nature trail (Korppoo, Archipelago Sea), as well as the underwater trail of the shipwreck Kronprins Gustav Adolf, situated near the island of Harmaja, south of Helsinki.
Similar projects are also ongoing in the other participating countries. For more information click the member countries names to find out what has been going on in 2009. From such information, our goal is to publish Blue Parks and Blue Trails as concepts and represent underwater nature and cultural values to the general public.
We aim to achieve these using GIS techniques, such as overlay analysis to show the overlap between areas of high natural and cultural value, as well as threat/pressure analyses to find areas of particular sensitivity or resilience. From these, we aim to make recommendations for setting up Blue Parks elsewhere.
Nature and cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable development and growth
How can natural and cultural values be a resource for sustainable development in the Nordic countries?
That is the question this project tries to answer, by providing case-studies of regional or local success stories. The possible synergy effect of working cross-sectoral with both natural and cultural heritage will be assessed. The project will therefore highlight examples where a combination of natural and cultural heritage has been the foundation of social, economic and environmentally sound development.
The project will concentrate on three themes: