St. Petersburg, the Republic of Karelia and the regions of Leningrad, Murmansk and Novgorod. In 1991, the Finnish Ministry of the Environment began cooperation on environmental protection projects with the areas neighboring Finland. Finland has an economic incentive to ensure environmental security for its forests, as forestry accounts for about 30 percent of the country's exports. The EEP aims to determine the main environmental problems, the measures to reduce them and a basis for future investment programs. Cooperation aims at reducing air and water pollution as well as waste problems of municipalities, industry, and energy production and improvement of hazardous waste management.
Cooperation includes both investment projects and technical assistance.
The investment projects aim at concrete improvements on the state of the environment, through construction and modernization, procurement of equipment, upgrading technology and related planning. Finland's environmental authorities and its neighboring countries agree which projects should be supported. Investment projects are carried out under commercial contracts between companies and public utilities. Much of the financing of the projects comes from the local partner. Finland's Ministry of the Environment is able to support investment plans up to a maximum of 50 percent of the Finnish share of costs.