Year in Review 2021 – a year of project implementation and building for the future

Another year of operating under pandemic restrictions has passed. While the restrictions have put substantial constraints on how we work, they have not held us back. Thanks to the passion, creativity, and hard efforts of my colleagues, we have found new ways to implement our projects, been able to keep our plans and achieve great results.

The organization’s impact efficiency has been quite remarkable and this probably is what distinguishes us the most. Our dedicated team of five co-workers managed to operate five different projects, launch the Baltic Sea Day in Sweden, and gather the executives of the leading Baltic Sea organizations, to mention just a few of the most obvious examples from the past year.

More than 6 tons of phosphorus have been stopped from reaching the Baltic Sea in 2021 alone. Even more is expected in the near future, as a result of our work in 2021. To put this into perspective, a reduction of 6 tons per year is more than what the entire country of Sweden* has been able to achieve on an annual budget of several hundred million SEK.

In addition to results that can be quantified in tons of phosphorus, our projects also have contributed to other important results such as:

• new measures being included in HELCOM’s updated Baltic Sea Action Plan,
• new guidelines in The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s (Naturvårdsverket) handbook “Guidance on the supervision and examination of ports”,
• additional modules in Greppa Näringen, and
• the addition of a key measure in Sweden’s Water Information System (VISS).

Further, in the past year RFTB was invited to provide expertise to the Ministry of the Environment, the Government Offices of Sweden, and HELCOM, as well as to participate as experts in several EU project applications.

For RFTB, 2021 has been an important year of project implementation. The great results that have been achieved have verified our strategy and given us the confidence to start growing our impact.

By the end of the year, we strengthened our organization with the addition of several new colleagues and increased our focus on Poland. We also opened our funding for additional like-minded philanthropists.

We look forward to 2022 – a year with new projects with great potential, existing projects in exciting phases, new initiatives under investigation, and hopefully a reopening of the world.

* According to HELCOM document: “Calculation of the fulfilment of the nutrient input ceilings by 2017” Sweden reduced phosphorus input by 17 tons in 2014-2017. The 2020 budget for direct eutrophication measures was 240 MSEK, press release, September 6, 2019, Regeringskansliet