On the western side, cities are also fighting with unemployment problems. Migration of people from the countryside to growing cities is still occurring and causing many kind of problems for city planners and politicians. In all countries most of the cities are facing hard economic problems.

Under these circumstances cities must take care of their everyday duties. Making choices between different alternatives is routine to our politicians. Strategic planning has become a very important tool in local level decision making and is commonly used in cities.

Sustainable development is one new strategic principle which has become an important factor to guide city development in the 1990´s. This is especially true in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR), where a lot of municipalities have started their Local Agenda 21 work. Nevertheless, the concept of sustainable development is still quite poorly known among many cities and other stakeholders at the local level.

As a result many local level decisions have little to do with sustainability so far. At the same time it is widely accepted in international policy that sustainable development is the best alternative development path. Yet unwise decisions are made due to a lack of proper knowledge. It is not easy to adopt sustainability principles, because in many cases it means that one can not accept the economically cheapest solutions.

Common Baltic View of Sustainable Development

To make sustainable choices easier for all stakeholders in BSR, the governments of our region decided in 1996 to produce a common view of sustainable development in the Baltic Sea Region.

As a result of two years hard work the document "Baltic 21 - An Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region" was finally adopted at the 7th Ministerial Session of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, Nyborg, June 22-23,1998. Since then, Baltic 21, as it is now called, has been the main guideline for sustainable development in the region.

Baltic 21 is first of all governmental agreements for regional sustainable development in BSR. The preparation work to compile the document was, however, done together with large group of experts representing e.g. research bodies, municipalities, NGO's and many international organisations.

As a result of this Baltic 21, which is by nature basically a governmental level action programme, includes now many actions relevant from the cities' point of view.

The Role of Cities Is Important

The main core of the Baltic 21 is the Action Programme consisting of 37 practically-orientated proposals for future measurement. 27 of these actions represent Baltic 21 sectors: agriculture, energy, fishery, forestry, industry, tourism and transport.

Three actions cover the problems of spatial planning and the work done under the umbrella of VASAB 2010. The coming 7 actions are the so called joint actions, in most cases covering issues not classified in other sectors.

Among these are many which also have close connections to municipalities. Joint action number 4: "City co-operation and sustainable development issues in cities and communities" is the one where the UBC will be in the main role.

The steering group of Baltic 21 (Senior Officials Group, SOG) has offered UBC the role of Lead Party in implementing this specific action. It seems obvious that the UBC will accept this offer and start to work in close co-operation with partners like ICLEI and BTO in its implementation.

UBC Policy

Sustainable development will be one of the key targets for Baltic cities in the near future. It will be a complicated and difficult goal to reach, but one can also say that it is the only goal worth trying to achieve. The work started under the Baltic 21 umbrella will certainly help cities to identify and solve problems ensuring sustainable development.