Legal Strategies for Sustainable Ecosystem Management

Legal institutions and regulations have great impact on the protection and management of ecosystems. Most countries are looking for effective legal strategies to protect the ecosystems and develop a sustainable ecosystem management. Climate change also creates new challenges for management of ecosystems. Many countries is making a shift of strategy from regulation of different areas as land planning and pollution to a more holistic and integrated regulation of ecosystems. There is also a development towards more widespread use of incentives and market mechanisms as an instrument for management of ecosystems. Great achievement has been made within law & economics in order to analyse what impact different legal regulations might have on economic development. Some of this insight may be useful also in developing models for sustainable ecosystem management, but the relation between legal regulation and ecosystem management seems to be far more complicated than the one between law and economic development.