Welcome

Dear friends and colleagues,

We warmly invite you to participate in the 3rd Baltic Sea Peace Conference, which will take place online on Saturday, 28 November, from 11:00 to 18:00 (CET), from 13:00 to 20:00 St. Petersburg time.

The conference is organized by the International Peace Bureau (IPB) and the Baltic Civil Peace Initiative (a network of peace activists, scientists, and ecologists from Russia), with the active involvement of peace and environmental organizations from Scandinavia, as well as civil activists, experts, and representatives of local communities from all countries in the Baltic Sea region.

The conference is a strictly non-partisan, non-governmental civic initiative; it is independent of any government and open to all individuals and groups who share the goals of peace, demilitarization, and environmental security in the Baltic region.

Our shared vision

The Baltic Sea must remain a sea of peace, cooperation, and common environmental security. Today, however, we are witnessing a spiral of mutual militarization that has reached unprecedented levels. The region is being integrated into strategic war planning, military budgets are rising, new bases are being built, and the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons is openly discussed.

The dangerous dynamic is inextricably linked to the ongoing war in Ukraine; the drift of the conflict into the Baltic—through drone attacks on ports and oil infrastructure—makes dialogue and de-escalation here a matter of survival for all states in the region.

These actions not only increase the risk of direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia/Belarus, but also create an environmental threat of planetary scale. More than 30 nuclear reactors and numerous radioactive waste storage sites are located in the Baltic Sea catchment area. Their destruction during hostilities would render the region uninhabitable for an indefinite period. The history of the Baltic Sea is already scarred by the environmental devastation of two world wars, the consequences of which we live with to this day. Militarisation has immense and immediate consequences for the environment—from pollution to the destruction of soil and the poisoning of water.

The vision of the Baltic as a Sea of Peace is not new. In the late 20th century, serious proposals were advanced to create a Nordic–Baltic nuclear-weapon-free zone. We return to this legacy, seeking modern forms of détente fit for the 21st century.