In April 2024, the FREIIA project team met on the Danish island of Bornholm in the southwestern Baltic Sea. For our project partners on Bornholm, the primary focus lies on achieving a circular economy and indeed, Bornholm district council has ambitious aims to reduce landfill and incineration to zero by 2030 and innovative measures in place to facilitate the reuse and recycling of an impressively wide range of materials.
Coastal landscape at Sandvig, Bornholm (Photo: C. Walsh)
At the same time, a shift in approach to nature conservation and appreciation of the fragility of the island’s natural environment is evident. The principal focus of nature conservation in Denmark has been on the preservation of certain landscape qualities. This static approach, enshrined in the 1992 Nature Conservation Act, allows for the continuation of existing uses (particularly farming) and is less suited to achieving biodiversity or ecosystem restoration objectives. Indeed, in some cases, active conservation measures are necessary to ensure that a landscape remains as it was at the time of its designation.
An area of woodland (1,150 ha, Denmark’s fifth largest forest), located at Almindingen in centre of Bornholm, is set to become one of a new generation of ‘nature national parks’, with an emphasis on nature restoration and rewilding on state-owned land. At Almindingen, the proposed national park follows on from a successful European bison reintroduction project. Plans for the park include the introduction of bison on a larger scale, in addition to red and fallow deer. Nevertheless, the proposed national park has met with some opposition, and some local organisations favour cattle, horses, sheep and goats, and the planned construction of a high perimeter fence raises additional concerns. In contrast to the case of Denmark’s five existing national parks (all established since 2000), public consultation and local community engagement on the location, objectives and conservation measures for the new nature national parks has been limited. The Danish Nature Agency will have a stronger role in both the governance and day-to-day management of these new smaller-scale nature national parks on state-owned lands.
Bison at Almindingen Forrest, Bornholm (source: Bornholm.info)
In parallel, the prospect of nominating the island as a whole as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve is under discussion, including at Bornholm’s Green Dialogue Forum in November 2023. Biosphere reserves under the UNESCO programme have a wider remit than national parks and are explicitly concerned with linking nature conservation (via protected area management in a core zone), with sound ecological practices (in a buffer zone) and sustainable regional development (in a surrounding or neighbouring transition/development zone). Biosphere reserves have a strong emphasis on research, education and public outreach with the aim of becoming ‘learning places for sustainable development’. Biosphere reserves in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe tend to be locally initiated and managed, with a stronger role for local municipalities.
At a more local level, the non-profit company Ivandet (literal translation: ‘in the water’) is working to gain knowledge and raise awareness of Bornholm’s marine environment. Following the fisheries crisis in the late 1980s, islanders have, in a sense, turned their backs to the sea, and much local, place-based practical knowledge of the sea is at risk of being lost. Ivandet seeks to build on this heritage to restore connections between islanders and visitors and the sea surrounding the island, as well as raise public awareness of Baltic Sea conservation issues at a larger scale.
The FREIIA team getting in touch with the sea with Ivandet, Bornholm, April 2024 (photo: Dennis Sieperda, FREIIA).
These three initiatives are very different in terms of their initiators, embedding in governance systems and even their objectives, but they do share common goals in seeking to improve quality of the island’s ecosystems and fostering informed awareness of conservation issues among both islanders and visitors. Whereas the plans for the nature national park at Almindingen are at an advanced stage, there are still many open questions regarding the proposal for a biosphere reserve. This means there may be a window of opportunity to align these initiatives with each other and the wider ambitions of Bornholm district council with regard to environmental sustainability and moving towards a circular economy. A biosphere reserve could, for example, be established with Almindingen as the core zone (or ‘beating heart’) and encompassing not only the whole island but also the surrounding the sea area. Including the coastline and surrounding waters as part of a buffer zone (with necessary exemptions for harbour and related activities) would emphasise the ecological connectivity between the land and the sea, as well as the cultural connection of the island community to the sea.
The island of Bornholm in its maritime context (source: Wikipedia)
The circular economy initiatives on Bornholm align well with the objectives of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves’ development zones with their emphasis on regional sustainability, innovation and learning. In this way, the biosphere reserve concept could provide an overarching framework for both sustainable transformation and nature conservation on the island, recognising that resilient and protected ecosystems must provide the foundation for a sustainable society and economy. Relevant examples of UNESCO Biosphere reserves at coastal and/or island areas of Europe include those at the Wadden Sea coast of Germany (Schleswig-Holstein 1990, Lower Saxony 1992), the Isle of Man (British territory in the Irish Sea 2016), and closer to home, the Danish island of Møn (established 2017).
This commentary has been prepared under the Interreg North Sea FREIIA (Facilitating Resilience Enhancing Islands Innovation Approaches) project (2022-2026).
