Environmental Protection in Lithuania

Lithuania has rapidly grown into one of the most environmentally-sound countries in the EU since their departure from the USSR. As of 2013, they were one of the lowest greenhouse gas emitters in the EU, and their annual average concentrations of air pollutants in urban areas didn’t exceed set limits. They were also deemed by the University of Yale as the country with the most successful forest protection and management in the world in 2012. Large-scale environmentally damaging incidents have dropped to one to two a year, and economic facilities that could damage the environment have been on the decline. Over time, the amount of pollutants in Lithuania’s waterways has dropped, with a particularly drastic drop in the mid 2000’s when they modernized and expanded their wastewater treatment facilities. As of 2012, around 97% of wastewater was being successfully cleaned to standard. An overall decrease in waterway pollutants like phosphorus and BOD7 has been reported since the mid 1990’s, but there has been no clear drop in nitrogen pollution as it primarily stems from agricultural runoff and is harder to control. Despite their success with maintaining clean waterways, they still struggle to diffuse pollution on surface water bodies.

Source: https://www.eea.europa.eu/soer/2015/countries/lithuania