Workshop on the Ecosystem Approach to the Management and Protection of the North Sea
Oslo - Norway 15 - 17 June 1998

Ecosystem approach to the management and protection of the North Sea

Opening address
By State Secretary Jesper W. Simonsen

Once more welcome to Norway - to Oslo this time - and to the Year of the Oceans.

A year has passed since some of you were gathered in Bergen at the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting of the North Sea Conferences. This time the Ministers have been replaced by scientists and managers, and the setting is a workshop. However, we are still here to deal with the same challenges, how to find the best ways to protect the environment of the North Sea and manage its resources in a sustainable way.

Norway attaches great importance to the North Sea process. This fruitful framework for co-operation between the North Sea States has developed from a more narrow pollution control aspect to a broader platform for protection and sustainable use of the total ecosystem. The development towards a broader and more holistic management of the North Sea was quite evident at the Esbjerg Conference and will be carried further at the next North Sea Conference in Oslo.

However, "the proof of the pudding lies in the eating" - or - in this context - the follow-up work of these conferences is what gives substance to the process. Norway wants to focus on the integration of fisheries and environmental issues as well as on the work with hazardous substances. This workshop in itself is a follow-up of what was agreed in Bergen and we also note with pleasure that progress has already been made on other issues under the bilateral EU-Norway fisheries agreement, especially concerning management strategies for important stocks in the North Sea.

In Bergen some important guiding principles were agreed. Among these were the Precautionary approach and the Ecosystem approach. As I see it, these two approaches represent basic elements in a new management strategy for human interference with ecosystems aiming to fulfil nutritional or other human needs or to deal with other human impacts on the ecosystems.

Today our focus is on the ecosystem approach. The application of an ecosystem approach to the marine environment and resources is still in its developing stages. It is, however, not the first time Norway hosts a workshop on the development and implementation of an ecosystem approach. In 1991 we arranged a seminar in Oslo on this approach to water management.

We are all concerned about the condition of the North Sea. We want this body of water to be clean and rich in biological diversity to support inter alia a sustainable utilisation of fish stocks. Recently there has been a growing feeling, at least in the environmental sector, that improvements in the present management of resources and environment must emerge from assessments based on the structure and functioning of the ecosystem itself. The Convention of Biological Diversity has elaborated on this idea. In January this year the Governments of Malawi and the Netherlands hosted a workshop on the more general aspects of the ecosystem approach. One of the tasks for our workshop, will therefore be to elaborate on the findings of the Malawi workshop applied in a marine context.

The Year of the Oceans constitutes a good framework for adding a further step to the development of a new, integrated management of the North Sea. Even if the concept and the reasoning behind an ecosystem approach is general and global, the ultimate adaptation and implementation of the concept has to be regional. Each region has its own, special natural and social conditions which will influence on the results. Thus the adaptation and implementation of the ecosystem approach in the North Sea will have to be done by the states around the North Sea themselves on the basis of more general guidelines.

Even if the concept of an ecosystem approach still need to be further developed, I like to visualise the principle in my own mind by using the management of a water course as an example. To manage big rivers and floods draining into the oceans, you have to start with the smaller brooks and rivers belonging to the same river system. You have to know the natural composition of the substrate and living organisms. You need to know where humans affect the system, and map the effects of these impacts. You have to check the content of waste and pollution coming out of the water system and see how this affects the marine area outside the estuaries. On this background management objectives for the whole water course have to be set up, and limits for sustainable use of its resources and levels of pollution have to be decided.

To succeed in implementing the ecosystem approach in the management of the North Sea, not only international co-operation, but also a system of co-operation across sectors has to be developed. Several attempts have been done in this direction, i.e. integrated coastal area management and coastal zone management. In such a system three basic requirements have to be met:

1) Scientific knowledge as a basis for action

2) Agreed management objectives at all levels

3) Agreed ways of co-operation and decision making

The role of science is essential in an ecosystem approach. We need the scientists to characterise the relevant ecosystem; map the biodiversity and examine the foodchains. Then we need their advice to be able to make the best possible decisions in resource management and environmental protection.

We have already gathered a lot of knowledge about the North Sea. One of the challenges will be to synthesise our present knowledge and map and fill in essential white spots in this map.

There is, however, one thing scientists cannot do; agree on management objectives. And here is a big challenge to all relevant sectors and governments around the North Sea: Co-operation towards a common understanding on how to apply the ecosystem approach when deciding on management objectives at different levels.

The future of the North Sea is our responsibility and the focus of this workshop. It is my hope that your efforts in this workshop will contribute to the general development of the ecosystem approach in marine management, and that the management of the North Sea may be an example of sound, regional management of a marine ecosystem. And here I want to repeat what was said in Bergen last year by our former Minister of the Environment: If we cannot manage to conserve the environment, the biodiversity and the viable commercial stocks of the North Sea, who could then be expected to accomplish this in other waters?

Finally I want to extend my sincerest thanks to the Nordic Council of Ministers who has supported this event financially, and to all the people involved in the planning and organisation of this work-shop.

Thank you.