Denmark

The Kingdom of Denmark is made up of Denmark, the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. Denmark itself has an area of 43000 square kilometres and a population of close to 5.2 million; the average population density is 120 people per square kilometre to no more than 592 persons per square kilometre in Greater Copenhagen itself. It has limited natural resources with an intensively cultivated agricultural sector; however, Denmark extracts oil and gas from the North Sea. The populations of the Faroe Islands and Greenland are very small.

The state of the environment in Denmark has been described (Ministry of the Environment, 1991a, 1991b). In 1971, Denmark created a Ministry of the Environment with a department and five agencies: the National Agency of Environmental Protection, the National Forest and Nature Agency, the National Agency for Physical Planning, the National Environmental Research Institute, and the Geological Survey of Denmark. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives high priority to international cooperation on the environment. The Danish Society for the Conservation of Nature is one of the largest voluntary interest groups in the kingdom.

In 1988, as a follow-up to the report of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), the Danish government prepared one of the first national action plans covering a number of areas vital to the environment: fishing, agriculture, industry, energy, transport, cities, and construction.