The seas and oceans, including the North Sea and Baltic Sea, are intensively used by humans. They provide food, energy, raw materials, transportation routes, and recreation. However, overuse is placing increasing pressure on fragile marine ecosystems. Sustainable solutions and ‘ecological guardrails’ are needed to balance human demands with marine protection.
In the German North and Baltic Seas, there are contaminated sites of about 1.6 million tons of conventional munitions and 5,000 tons of chemical warfare agents dumped during World War II by military operations or afterwards by dumping. This endangers shipping, fishing, tourism, people on beaches as well as the marine environment and hinders offshore installations and submarine cable laying.
Although there is no legal definition in Germany for the terms Militärische Altlasten (military-contaminated sites) and Rüstungsaltlasten (armanent-contaminated sites), they nonetheless fall within the scope of site contamination and former waste disposal sites. An historical classification is often applied that is based on usage and operation prior to 1945 or thereafter.
