Abstract: | Estonia has made relatively fast progress in developing its environmental policy and drafting legislation during the last decade. Strategic environmental documents and programmes have been elaborated, and Estonia has successfully started to implement the goals set in these documents. Implementation of agreed environmental policy goals requires significant financial resources as well as know-how, and international cooperation is one of the most important sources of them. Bilateral environmental cooperation with Northern and Central European countries, which is based on international regime-like arrangements and is well institutionalised, has been and still is an important source of know-how as well as financial assistance for the improvement of the state of the environment in Estonia. Experience acquired in this cooperation process has also helped Estonia to pave the way towards successful accession negotiations with the European Union. |