Summary and concluding remarks about the ecosystem management

Summary and concluding remarks about ecosystem based management (Introduction)

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This subchapter is build up of three parts. The first part summaries the themes that have been highlighted as relevant for development of ecosystem based anagement in the previous subchapters under chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management. The second part focuses on how different themes may interact with each other. The aim of this is to illustrate how broad and holistic assessments that underlies ecosystem based management may pave the way for improvements in management. Concluding remarks are given in the third part.

Interaction between themes and concluding remarks

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It can easily be seen that themes discussed above may interact with each other. For example, if ocean acidification causes deteriorations of the food base of fish stocks, this can worsen the effect that any overfishing may have on these stocks. Similarly, if both acidification and bottom trawling affect benthic communities, their effects may add on or even amplify each other. A number of other interactions are possible. For example, if acidification, bottom trawling and overfishing should have a combined negative impact on food sources of seabirds and marine mammals in the future, accidental oil spills may get more serious impacts on already stressed populations of birds and mammals.

Themes related to deviation from goals, even without impact

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The following themes can be classified in this category:

Long range transboundary pollution (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Pollution)
Risk of radioactive pollution (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Pollution)

Themes related to risk of impact in the future

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These themes can be listed here:

Risk of accidental discharges from oil and gas activities and ship transport (chapters Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Oil and gas activities and Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Maritime transport)
Risk of introduction of alien species from ship traffic (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Maritime transport)

Themes related to demonstrated or likely impact

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The following themes can be listed under this category:

Ocean acidification (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Pollution)
Mixed fisheries, undersized fish, discard, bycatches and IUU fishing (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Fisheries)
Impact of bottom trawling on benthos (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Fisheries)
Implementing the ecosystem approach to fisheries (chapter Issues of importance for ecosystem based management - Fisheries)

Summary of themes relevant for ecosystem based management

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As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the themes that are discussed as relevant for the development of ecosystem based management can be of three different types:

Instances where impact of human activities on the ecosystem has been demonstrated or is likely
Instances where there is a risk for such impact from future activities
Instances where there is no significant impact in the ecosystem but it has been shown or might be expected that the situation deviates from goals that we can expect that an ecosystem based management plan will have

Examples of such goals are listed in the introduction of this chapter.