The research team have initiated a study together with Danish, Estonian and Polish researchers based at the Universities of Copenhagen, Tartu and Gdansk, each carrying out an individual country study that was conducted in the second half of 2012 and reported in 2013. The resulting country reports are made available digitally below, as well as on the Stockholm Centre for Environmental Law and Policy (SMC) web page to provide opportunity for further use of the data by the project group members, and other researchers.
The country studies were carried out and reported in accordance to a common template, thus ensuring comparability of the reported data. Consequently, all country base studies will show the following contents:
Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the national legal system, and the environmental problem from the national perspective. This introduction provides a context to the further study, and possibility for understanding differences and similarities. Such understanding can become important in further comparative analyses.
Chapter 2 shows how, when and where the central international law is implemented in the national legal order. This links the national regulations to the relevant international law, and provides materials for more structural comparison and assessment for the level and method of implementation. It also provides a guide for further and more functionally oriented investigations of the regulation of nutrient emissions control. The chapter covers BSAP and other HELCOM documents, the WFD, the MSD, the Nitrate Directive, and the Waste Water Directive, etc.
In the following parts (Chapter 3 and 4) of the study, the regulation of the sources of nutrients pollution chosen for this study are described. Together with Chapter 5 on river basin management, these parts are central for the study. The purpose here is both to describe the regulatory system and to assess its potential for ecosystems approach, or lack thereof. First of all, the relevant regulatory order is to be described, including law on substantive standards and regulatory instruments for controlling compliance, and realizing the objectives and aims (which should have been mentioned above). The authors have been asked to note observations of legal and practical problems in such regulation, to not only describe “black letter law” but also “law in action”.
Chapters 3–5 importantly also present reflections and some analytical observations pertaining to the presence and the realization of ecosystems approach in the relevant areas of national environmental law and management. The authors have looked for four characteristics or indicators of ecosystems approach, and have been asked to comment on a series of matters:
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Ecological standards in regulating agriculture. How are such standards prescribed, monitored, enforced, etc.?
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Adaptiveness. Is regulation adaptive to the status of the ecological systems and how?
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Stakeholders involvement. Are stakeholders effectively involved in the regulatory procedure, and are the effects on different kinds of stakeholders considered?
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Legal measures in response to poor ecological status. Is regulation flexible, so as to intervene and adjust to observed poor ecological status or changed environmental circumstances? Can stakeholders trigger such flexibility?
The reports are concluded with a closing chapter 6 (for the Estonian report some added information about other relevant legal measures have been presented under Chapter 6, leaving concluding remarks for Chapter 7).