Towards an Ecosystem Approach to Management in Regional Marine Governance? The Baltic Sea Context

Abstract

Currently, European marine governance seems to be undergoing significant changes. From having been based largely on scientific expert knowledge, restricted risk assessments and governmental regulation, we are now witnessing a management turn towards holistic perspectives, the inclusion of stakeholders, adaptive governance, and co-production of knowledge—the so-called ecosystem approach to management (EAM). By using the Baltic Sea as an example of these changes, we have taken a closer look at the 2007 Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) of the Helsinki Commission and the recent organizational changes within the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Informed by a Reflexive Governance perspective, the primary objective has been to analyse the extent to which institutional preconditions for using an EAM exist in these two cases. Our results show that even though the BSAP has been designed with an EAM approach as its core philosophy, existing implementation, financing, monitoring, and enforcement structures make it unlikely that actual management modes will change significantly in the near feature. Changes in the ICES have occurred as a result of an internal restructuring process characterized by integrative and learning elements. It has been shown that adopting a broad social science perspective and a reflexive governance viewpoint can elucidate how factors such as inadequate institutional change, limited cooperation over sector borders, and adjustment problems caused by path dependency can threaten the successful turn towards the EAM in marine governance.

Keywords:

• Ecosystem approach to management
• environment
• reflexive governance
• Baltic Sea
• HELCOM
• ICES

Notes

See the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, Issue I, 2012, Special Issue: Marine Spatial Planning: A New Frontier?

The risk areas as identified in RISKGOV include the following: eutrophication, invasive alien species, hazardous chemicals, over-fishing and oil pollution from marine transportations. Most of the reports from the RISKGOV project are available for free downloading at http://www.sh.se/riskgov.

The full title of the 1992 action programme was the JCP. The JCP was formally closed in 2003.

See also Regeringens Skrivelse (2009) on Measures for a Living Sea.

Author's translation from Swedish.

A joint permanent Baltic Sea Fund has been suggested several times (Hassler, 2006; HELCOM, 2007), but so far few concrete steps in this direction have been taken. However, a small BSAP Trust fund was set up after a Swedish initiative in 2009 to facilitate the implementation of the action plan. So far (December 2011), Sweden has contributed EUR 9 million and Finland EUR 2 million.

See http://www.ices.dk/aboutus/aboutus.asp.

Fisheries technology, Oceanography, Resource Management, Marine Habitat, Mariculture, Living Resources, Baltic, Diadromous Fish.

Steering group on ecosystem functions, steering group on human interactions on ecosystems, steering group on sustainable use of ecosystems, steering group on regional seas programmes, steering group on ecosystem surveys science and technology. See http://www.ices.dk/iceswork/SCICOM/SCICOMstructure.asp (accessed 4 January 2012).

See also the ICES website at: http://www.ices.dk/advice/observers.asp.