Denmark is very small country; we have a population of around 5.5 million and the area's 44,000 square kilometre. And Denmark has a special situation that two-third of the area is actively used for agriculture purposes and the other thing which is special for Denmark is that all our drinking water is actually coming from groundwater what is, worldwide, a very special situation. Very few countries have that kind of situation and of it course means that we care a lot for the groundwater and also from the perspective of agriculture, it both economically benefit for Denmark but on the other hand there will also be environmental issues related to agriculture in modern society. The legislation in Denmark is very much linked to the EU, so we i general follow the EU regulation and most of our environmental laws in Denmark, they of course are connected to what is done in the EU countries. As a very good example, we have the EU Water Framework Directive, which is implemented in Denmark and it plays a major role for the way we manage our water resources. If we look at Denmark and the way we manage the environment in general Denmark can be divided, from this point of view, into three levels: we have the state level, we have the regional level, and we have the municipalities. We have around 98 municipalities in Denmark, five regions and, of course, one state. And the municipalities, they are in principle doing all the daily management, so they can take care of wastewater discharges, water supply, all kind of things about the management of our environmental laws. The framework, it's given by the state, so the regulations, the laws are on the state level. Then, we have the regions and their main responsibility is related to contaminated sites, so they are not involved in many other things but they are very much... they are in charge, when we're talking about contaminated sites and the risk to groundwater or to other kind of problems related to contaminated sites. If you look at the agriculture and the use of both nutrients and pesticides, then Denmark is a modern society and it's a highly industrialized agriculture that we have in Denmark, very productive and they can only be so productive because they use both nutrients and they use pesticides. Of course, this will give us some challenges. For the new nutrients, we have eutrophication, we have issues with our water environmental in general, and for pesticides, it's both for the terrestrial environment but it's also for the water resources. So, all the time we need a kind of trade off between how we make the environment safe on the one hand and on the other hand it's important that we still have a production and we are able to produce in a cost-effective way. It's a big debate in Denmark. We have a very strict regulation and it might be that the regulation is actually more tight, more strict, compared to other European countries and our competitors in the world market. And this, of course, is debated - we have a very high interest, in society, for buying ecological food and other things on the one hand and on the other hand we need this export. So, there we have something that we need to balance and this is absolutely one of the main challenges we have right now. The other issue I'd like to mention is related to the contaminated sites. It can be old landfills, it can be former gasoline sites, dry cleaning facilities' landfills, it can be old dumpsites. And in these sites - we have a huge number in Denmark - we have mapped these sites for many years and today we have around 30,000 sites, which means that with all these sites, we are simply not able to remediate all of them, so we need to do very detailed risk assessment, to make sure that if we do something on that sites, it's because they really pose a risk. The risk could be towards groundwater, it could be the area usage, if there might be a problem with heavy metals or other compounds in the soil or it could also be vapors going into houses. So, this management of contaminated sites, is a major issue and as I mentioned it previously, it relate to the regions, because they have a responsibility for doing this. So, that's also a big challenge and a concrete example on this is related to a former dumpsite at the west coast, in the northern part of Denmark. A company formerly called Cheminova, they dumped - directly on the beach - dumped a huge amount of chemicals and these chemicals, they've discharged them into the sea and it has been a severe problem for many years and has been debated for a long time, what to do about it. There's been several investigations and now we are at the point - so it has been decided - we need to cope with this problem, we need to do something. The question is what to do. And - as a part of this, in this case - we don't have any risk towards groundwater, so, the people and the interest in this is not related to our drinking water, it's related to the area usage, it's related to tourists and a lot of other things. So, in order to balance this, it's important not only to take into account the environmental issues, but also look into other discussions related to societal benefits of doing something at the sites. And in order to do this in a good way, we, in Denmark, we have initiated to do workshops, do other things, where we have used participation in this processes. So, we don't take decisions that has come from the top-down decisions, but actually it's debated in the local society and it's based, hopefully, on some kind of common agreement and if we can do that then the decisions, in our opinion, will be the best and it'll be a good way to proceed with this kind of big decisions, because they cost a lot of money, and there will trade-offs in such decisions.
