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.