Riku Varjopuro

Cost-effectiveness of managing Natura 2000 sites: an exploratory study for Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland

Natura 2000 sites are expected to assure the long-term survival of Europe’s most valuable and threatened species and habitats. It follows that successful management of the sites is of great importance. Next to goal attainment, cost-effectiveness is increasingly recognised as a key requirement for gaining social and political acceptance for costly conservation measures. We identify and qualitatively examine issues of cost-effectiveness related to the design and implementation of management measures in Natura 2000 sites in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. Given the wide variety of management design and implementation options within the four countries, our study is purely of an exploratory nature. We derive recommendations for improving the cost-effectiveness of management in Natura 2000 sites and for future research. Examples of policy recommendations include guaranteeing the availability of funds for longer periods, and ensuring the appropriate allocation of funds between the different tasks of designing and implementing management plans. Further research should examine the cost-effectiveness of controversial suggestions such as, for example, more tailored payment schemes for conservation measures that result in higher ecological outputs but are costly to administer. Moreover, more research is needed to better understand how rules for administrations, as well as rules and governance structures for tasks within administrations, should be designed.

Marine spatial planning and Good Environmental Status: a perspective on spatial and temporal dimensions

The European Union Marine Strategy Framework Directive requires the Good Environmental Status of marine environments in Europes regional seas; yet, maritime activities, including sources of marine degradation, are diversifying and intensifying in an increasingly globalized world. Marine spatial planning is emerging as a tool for rationalizing competing uses of the marine environment while guarding its quality. A directive guiding the development of such plans by European Union member states is currently being formulated. There is an undeniable need for marine spatial planning. However, we argue that considerable care must be taken with marine spatial planning, as the spatial and temporal scales of maritime activities and of Good Environmental Status may be mismatched. We identify four principles for careful and explicit consideration to align the requirements of the two directives and enable marine spatial planning to support the achievement of Good Environmental Status in Europes regional seas.

Baltic Seal Reconciliation in Practice

This chapter presents the results of case studies on human-wildlife conflicts conducted in Sweden and Finland. In both cases the conflict is between the conservation of the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and small-scale coastal fishing. The characteristics of the conflict between grey seal protection and fishery can be shown by way of a systematic comparison between the two countries and model regions as done here. Thus one can also better see what can be learned from the comparison of the cases. The main messages from both case studies in the Baltic Sea are formulated with regard to the significance of coastal fishery (as resource manager, not only resource user), with regard to single conflict mitigation measures, such as seal hunting and technical solutions to the conflict, and with regard to a combination of measures and overall approaches to conflict management. All these messages converge to the conclusion that much more can be learned from the management of the seal conflict than the resolution of that specific conflict: one by one the lessons learnt turn out to be steps of a more encompassing strategy of sustainable resource management in the coastal zone.

Co-Management and Recreational Fishing

Recreational fishing and its governance has rarely been studied, partly due to the short history of the leisure hobbies in the modern society compared with the long traditions of fishing as a livelihood. However, there has been academic interest in the social dimensions of recreational fisheries, especially in The USA and Canada (Viard and Brenner, 1998). In many countries the recreational fishermen have become powerful stakeholders in the utilization of fishing waters. Yet they often form heterogeneous groups and are not self-evidently included in a participatory management system.

Module 4: Legal and Institutional Framework

This chapter focuses on the legal and institutional framework that is relevant for the reconciliation of human-wildlife conflicts. The identification of the framework is important, because laws, regulations and norms may impose severe restrictions for reconciliation policies, but also because they open avenues of action. The legal and institutional framework involves governmental levels from local to international as well as different policy sectors from nature conservation and hunting to trade and competition. Relevant governmental levels and policy sectors vary greatly, depending on the conflict and national politico-administrative traditions. Presentation of the framework is organized by using three categories of possible policy instrument types that progress from stringent to least binding measures: “nature conservation regulation”, “economic instruments” and “information and training”.

Marine environmental vulnerability and cumulative risk profiles to support ecosystem-based adaptive maritime spatial planning

Original Article Marine environmental vulnerability and cumulative risk profiles to support ecosystem-based adaptive maritime spatial planning Robert Aps*, Kristjan Herkül, Jonne Kotta, Roland Cormier, Kirsi Kostamo, Leena Laamanen, Juho Lappalainen, Külli Lokko, Anneliis Peterson, and Riku Varjopuro Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu, Mäealuse 14, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Max-Planck-Stra e 1, 21502 Geesthacht, Germany Finnish Environment Institute, Mechelininkatu 34 A, 00260 Helsinki, Finland *Corresponding author: tel: þ3725062597; e-mail: robert.aps@ut.ee.

Communiqué on the results of the research on blue growth in the selected international projects aimed at enhancement of maritime spatial planning in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR)

Blue growth is a relatively new policy of EU enhancing sustainable use of the sea resources. The relation between blue growth and maritime spatial planning (MSP) are not obvious. Both belong to a class of EU policies and both cover the sea space. Since maritime spatial planning in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) has recently gained its momentum, the maritime spatial planners face the challenge of incorporating the concept of the blue growth into their planning processes. This paper facilitates this task by providing a comprehensive information on the international projects executed by the maritime spatial planners and the relations of those projects to the concept of the blue growth. This is important in order to capitalize on what has been achieved so far. However, it seems that has been so far no single “planning project” focusing exclusively on the blue growth and this growth has been tackled in such projects rather at ad hoc and non-systematic manner. Thus, the research on relations between MSP and blue growth seems to be still pending. Possible directions of its development are suggested in the final part of the paper.

Chapter 8:The Implementation of International Biodiversity Initiatives: Constraints and Successes

Jared Diamond1 describes in his book Collapse how human societies throughout history have affected their own survival by the way they have used natural resources. The book provides several examples of social behaviour driven by short-term local needs instead of taking a long-term and broad-scale app...