The complexities of plain writing

On March 5th, the book “Green Belt of Fennoscandia” was presented at the Karelian Research Centre RAS.

The core elements of the Green Belt of Fennoscandia (a wide green strip of borderlands stretching from the Barents Sea to the Baltic Sea) are protected areas. The idea to write a book about the pristine nature preserved in this land owing to strict regulations at the national border emerged in 2013, which was announced the Environment Year. The resolution to produce the volume was taken by KarRC RAS Presidium.

Staff from four institutes of the Karelian Research Centre and the Petrozavodsk State University contributed to the edition. To attract a wider readership the authors-to-be were initially challenged to formulate their concepts as briefly as possible in a language comprehensible to a layman, without specialized terminology. As one of the book’s editors Dr. Andrey Gromtsev noted, simplifying scientific ideas to the level of common understanding proved to be a challenging task. Yet, the task was fulfilled. After the editing, the texts included in the book appeared not only clear and articulate, but also quite interesting.

The book offers a succinct and educational account of current knowledge about the Green Belt of Fennoscandia, its natural features, local flora and fauna, status of forest, wetland and meadow ecosystems. The concluding section is made up of descriptions of operating and planned protected areas. At the preparatory stage support was provided by the Ministry of Nature Use and the Environment, Republic of Karelia. Funding was contributed also by the now completed project “Intellectually driven management of natural resource of Green Belt of Fennoscandia” (IntellGreenBelt) implemented under the Karelia Cross-border Cooperation Programme of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument. The run of the “Green Belt of Fennoscandia” book is 600 copies, each 115 pages with 57 colour illustrations. Those who have no chance to buy the book will be able to access it online – it will soon be available on KarRC RAS website in the Publications section.

Sergey Khokhlov