LIFE IP CleanEST is an integrated water management project that is focused on improving the status of water bodies in Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru Counties.
The project was launched by the Ministry of the Environment in 2019. Within a space of ten years, the project will focus on the measures of the existing water management plan, as well as on potential new solutions. For example, remote monitoring solutions are being developed and ecosystem services are being mapped.
In total, the project covers an area of 240,000 hectares, involving a total of 574 km of bodies of watercourses and almost 160,000 hectares of coastal water bodies. As an integrated project, the water bodies of Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru Counties are dealt with as a whole, taking into consideration diffuse and point sources of pollution, pressure factors, as well as ecological condition.
The project's main fields of activity are:
- reducing harmfulness of residual pollution,
- identifying and restoring the goods of ecosystems,
- developing solutions to reduce the pressure from agriculture on the environment,
- identification of the need for reclamation of the local management systems,
- liquidation of migration barriers to improve the ecological status of the rivers,
- increasing environmental awareness.
The project is funded by the European Commission LIFE programme and the Republic of Estonia. The LIFE programme is a financial instrument of the European Commission which has been used for funding environmental projects in the European Union for over twenty years. It is the only environment-focused instrument which supports the development and implementation of the EU environmental policy.