Both bodies reported on the state of their activities and environmental developments in their respective countries. Previous cooperation between Estonia and Latvia has concentrated on radiation and monitoring, however this opportunity gave both countries time to tackle the topic of the use of the environment.
The Estonian delegation was led by deputy director general, Erik Kosenkranius, and the Latvian delegation by deputy director general Laura Anteina. Erik Kosenkranius, deputy director general of the Environmental Board said the following about the meeting: “Seeing the importance of meetings with our neighbours, we should strive for further communication. There are overlapping topics up for discussion. For example, we discussed a similar bottleneck of workloads in the environmental fields. There is much to do, but very little funding to do it.”
The Latvian delegation gave an overview of the development of environmental IT systems, including mobile apps, a processing environment for environmental registrations and a system for planning inspections. The two delegations also discussed ways to categorise environmental licenses by risk factor, as well as the practices of making the licences public. The Latvian delegation also noted their interest in exchanging information on the topic of environmental licence state fees and expressed curiosity in Estonia’s practices regarding pre-assessing environmental impacts on coastal regions.
Cooperating in the field of radiation was also discussed. The history of Latvian-Estonian cooperation goes back to the 1990s, when both countries worked together on topics of radiation and monitoring. In 2020, the two countries signed a radiation-related cooperation agreement. This is the first time that the two Environmental Boards have discussed environmental utility. Teet Koitjärv is the Estonian coordinator of the Latvian and Estonian Environmental Board friendship.
In addition to the aforementioned cooperation with Latvia, Estonia also signed a cooperation agreement in 2014 regarding wildlife, where the Environmental Board’s partner is the Latvian Nature Conservation Department (Dabas aizsardzības pārvalde).