Marine and coastal ecosystem-based risk management handbook

The management of environmental issues is usually linked to chains of cause and effect. In the widely used DPSIR Framework (Driving forces, Pressures, State, Impacts, Responses), they are analytically structured along pressures, which are caused by one or multiple drivers and resulting changes in the state of the ecosystem or ecosystem components. These changes may lead to impacts on the societal use of ecosystem goods and services and require responses in the form of specific management actions, which can be regulatory, that is, based on market incentives and/or any rules agreed among the major stakeholders. In most cases, environmental management responses are designed to eliminate, control, mitigate, or compensate pressures related to the drivers of human activities with the purpose of avoiding potential environmental effects. They often aim at a specific quantitative level of pressures, for example reaching a particular regulatory set threshold for a specific pollutant.