The Barents Region is in the Arctic and covers the area of Western Russia and the northern areas of Finland, Sweden and Norway. The Barents Sea has anaverage depth 230 m, bordered by the shelf edge towards the Norwegian Sea in the west, the island of Svalbard (Norway) in the northwest, and the islands of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya (Russia) in the northeast and east.

Antarctic is the fifth largest continent of the world at 14 million square kilometres and is covered in a permanent continental ice. The ice is distributed in two major ice sheets, the East Antarctic and the West Antarctic, and in addition there are shelf ice, extending over the sea water.

This figure shows the total amounts of hazardous waste disposed of through 16 different methods in 1997 by parties to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. It shows the amounts based on export data and based on import data. List of D-codes (disposal methods) from the full report: 'D1, D2 and D4 (landfill, land treatment); D3 and D12 (underground storage); D5 (specially engineered la...

Barents Sea: The 2004 lifting of an embargo on offshore hydrocarbon exploration in the Norwegian Barents has renewed activity there. Regulation of exploration is animportant political issue. Debate in 2005 focused on environmental protection and establishing areas free of oil development. In Russia five companies were selected as finalists in the joint development of the Shtokman gas field, in the Barents Sea. This field is estimated to hold twic...

Percentage of wetlands out of total land area (by grid cell) for the Baltic Sea drainage basin. Wetlands acts as buffers in cases such as antropogenic nutrient releases (which leads to eutrophication) and acidification. The ratios have been estimated from various sources, and resembles the situation at approximately 1990.

The Baltic Sea region is covered in primarily forested land and crop land, in the taiga and temperate forest regions. Agricultural land is a main driver for nutrient inputs to the Baltic Sea, and thus eutorphication, and is thus relevant. Forest lands acts as a net buffer for nutrients, unless it is heavily diked and/or fertilised.

This 'basemap' displays the extent of the drainage basin (the boundary for the water that ends up in the Baltic Sea), and the countries in the region. The drainage basin represents all water that drains into the sea, through rivers and ground water.

Rising sea level would destroy weak parts of the sand belt, which is essential for the protection of lagoons and the low-lying reclaimed lands in the Nile delta of Egypt (Mediterranean Sea). The impacts would be very serious: One third of Egypt's fish catches are made in the lagoons. Sea level rise would change the water quality and affect most fresh water fish. Valuable agricultural land would be inundated.

Some countries, for example the Netherlands and Belgium, seem to act as “waste dispatchers”. Their figures suggest that they are the top waste exporters, a fact that reflects neither the waste they produce (given their population) nor their internal processing capacity. Presumably large amounts of hazardous waste are simply passing through Antwerp, Rotterdam and other industrial ports on the North Sea.

The Caspian Sea region presents a wealth of opportunities in various aspect, including bioresources, transport corridors, and not ecotourism. These new ventures may bring increased prosperity, but they also put pressure on traditional rural communities and the environment.

The characteristic feature in all four post-Soviet countries (Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan) is a relatively high level of education in relation to national income and rather low life expectancy, indicating high levels of poverty and deficient healthcare. In contrast the level for all three indicators in Iran is fairly balanced.

The prospects for rapid oil wealth contrast with fast spreading poverty following the collapse of the Soviet economy. Although massive investment has suddenly been channelled into the area, its effect is still both geographically and socially very limited, with little widespread impact on society.

The region presents a wealth of opportunities in other areas, including bioresources, transport corridors, and not least ecotourism. These new ventures may bring increased prosperity, but they also put pressure on traditional rural communities and the environment. This graphic presents the number of species in the groups: phytoplankton, zooplankton, zoobenthos, fishes, marine and land mammals and birds.

The Black and Mediterranean Seas are one of the main outlets for transporting fuel resources that have been extracted around the Caspian Sea region and from further inland. Oil is transported in pipelines to the ports on the Black Sea. Forecast project a dramatic increase by 2010, including the opening of a new port in Turkey.

Much of the area near Koshkar-Ata Lake in Kazakhstan, just off the shore of the Caspian Sea, has been severely polluted due to mining activities of uranium phosphate. The area is also affected from chemical plants and metallurgic industries. The pollutants are quickly making there way to the Caspian Sea.

In all the areas bordering on the Caspian, priority must be given to diversifying activities and investment. Particular attention should be given to sectors such as tourism, agriculture and food production as well as services.

Kara-Bogaz-Gol is a lowland area that forms a highly saline bay on the east side of the Caspian Sea, in Turkmenistan. In Soviet times it was decided to set up a dam to block the flow of saline water from the bay to the Caspian Sea, and this was completed in 1980. The ensuing increase in the salt content of the southern part of the Caspian had biological consequences. In the spring of 1992, in view of the scale of the disaster, Turkmenistan, which...

Most of the water flowing into the sea comes from coastal rivers – currently supplying 300 to 310 cubic km a year. The Volga alone accounts for 80% of inflow. But it has dropped substantially during the 20th century, declining from about 400 cubic km in the 1920-30s to between 260 cubic km and 270 cubic km at present, due to various climatic factors and human activities such as dams built for hydroelectric energy production.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) measures how much a currency can buy in terms of an international benchmark (usually dollars), since the cost of goods and services differs between countries. PPP is below the value of a US dollar in countries where the general price index is lower than in the US (as is the case for all five Caspian states -Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, to varying extents), and above it where the prices are h...

The Caspian Sea runs north and south, extending over 1,200 km, with an average width of 320 km. It covers approximately 400,000 sq km (an area slightly larger than Germany). The population of the region is about 14 million, distributed over the coastal provinces of five countries: 6.5 million in Iran, 3.9 million in Russia, 2.2 million in Azerbaijan, 0.8 million in Kazakhstan and 0.4 million in Turkmenistan.