The Oslofjord faces severe ecosystem deterioration due to pollution, runoff, overfishing, and coastal developments. The area is governed by multiple authorities, requiring complex cross-sectoral and territorial coordination.

The River Basin Management offers a cross-sectoral approach, but focuses on freshwater and lacks marine indicators, excluding sectors like fisheries. Municipal spatial plans, while crucial for land-based activities impacting the fjord, rarely regulate the use of the fjord itself.

While Norway has robust ecosystem-based ocean management for its open waters, coastal zones like the Oslofjord have lagged behind. This gap underscores the need for more integrated approaches that address the unique challenges of coastal ecosystems. This case study examines the implementation and interaction of these policies and tools to identify governance gaps and improve the management of coastal zones such as the Oslofjord.

Relevant governance frameworks

River Basin Management Plans (RBMP)
Environmental plans aiming for good chemical and ecological status. They focus on pollution from land-based sources, both nutrients (N and P) and contaminants. The measures are voluntary commitments formulated and implemented by sectoral authorities and municipalities. Key areas of responsibility for the municipalities are handling of sewage (pipelines, treatment plants), land-use planning and assistance to farmers.
Municipal plans
General master plan setting out the ambitions for the development of the municipality. Objectives are broad and may incorporate environmental ambitions. The master plan should give direction to a spatial master plan.
While these plans are mandatory, the municipalities may voluntarily develop thematic plans according to their ambitions and needs, including how to follow up legal obligations and national policy. It is the combination of these plans that defines how a municipality intends to regulate private actors where it has jurisdiction (land and sea use, and small-scale pollution).
Integrated Ocean Management Plans (IOMPs)
As a main rule, they apply to the oceans outside the baseline. They raise certain issues also for the coastal zone, for instance, the status of kelp forests and seabird populations, and have identified valuable and vulnerable areas (EBSAs) that cross the boundary to the coast.
While these plans are mandatory, the municipalities may voluntarily develop thematic plans according to their ambitions and needs, including how to follow up legal obligations and national policy. It is the combination of these plans that defines how a municipality intends to regulate private actors where it has jurisdiction (land and sea use, and small-scale pollution).
Oslofjord Plan
Introduced in 2021 by the Norwegian government in response to a parliamentary request. The following-up of the plan is administered by a secretariate led by the Environment Agency. An important mechanism is the Oslofjord Council (comprising national agencies, local authorities, and interest groups) convenes regularly to discuss implementation.
In contrast to other policies, the Oslofjord Plan uniquely integrates policy objectives and instruments across multiple sectors, including land use, agriculture, sewage, fisheries, spatial management, invasive species control, heritage, and climate initiatives.

Main findings

Is there horizontal coherence between RBMPs (WFD), Integrated Ocean Management Plans, and municipal spatial plans? What does the Government’s Oslofjord plan add to this?

RBMPs

Exclusion of fisheries sector in coastal waters
This exclusion implies that they cannot address one of the key reasons for ecosystem degradation of the Oslofjord. The plans covering the Oslofjord focus more on freshwater than the Fjord. While there is verbal recognition of the linkages between the Fjord and land-based sources of pollution, most notably discharges of nutrients from agriculture and sewage, the interlinkages are not concretized in assessments.

IOMPs

oceanic spatial scope
There is mentioning of eutrophication in Skagerak, but no assessment of the status in the fjords and no designation of measures against it. Fish and fisheries are covered, but the focus is not on coastal species and interlinkages between fish in the fjords and the ocean.

Municipalities’ plans

May include environmental issues in general and the Oslofjord in particular.
An evaluation of actions until the end of 2022 found that the municipalities had not been active on halting pollution and changing land-use planning. Asker is a large municipality that gradually pays more attention to the protection of the Oslofjord and may be followed by others.

Government’s plan for the Oslofjord

A holistic approach
The plan reiterates the objectives and measures on pollution from the RBMPs. This is supplemented with measures for especially fisheries and land use. The creation of an Oslofjord Council for dialogue on implementation is an innovative political experiment for the involvement of all relevant actors
  • The RBMPs main objectives of achieving good chemical and good ecological status make them highly relevant for halting pollution and improving biodiversity. Their effectiveness in reaching these objectives are reduced by their limited coverage of the whole coastal ecosystems and all activities/pressures affecting it, the limited focus on upstream-downstream dynamics, as well as lack of power and positive stimuli to stimulate involved parties to take measures. Adaptation to changing climate is mentioned, but not much elaborated, neither for managing water and ecosystem qualities, nor for managing increased quantities of water. 
  • The Ocean Management Plans address biodiversity (ecosystems) and threats upon it from i.a. pollution. They have extensively reviewed occurring and projected climate change with the ambition of adapting ocean management to the changes. Weak legal status and unclear obligations makes it hard to evaluate their effects on sectoral management. As mentioned above, their relevance for the coastal zone, including the Oslofjord, is limited.
  • The municipalities currently have not done enough to halt land-based pollution. Their planning and management of land and sea uses in the fjord, along the coastline and along watersheds, have many unused possibilities to address biodiversity loss more effectively. They are at uneven stages of developing plans and actions for climate adaptation, mainly focusing on land-based challenges such as how to tackle extreme events with excessive water and landslides.   
  • The governmental plan reinforces the work on pollution and biodiversity, but does not consider climate adaptation as a separate topic. However, the plan takes the general view that climate change reinforces the effects of other pressures on the marine ecosystems. Measures aiming at restoring them will increase their resilience towards future climate change and should therefore be considered adaptation measures.

How to enhance horizontal coherence to address the Oslofjord’s ecosystem deterioration problem?

What needs to be done to enhance the delivery of the high-level Norwegian objectives of zero pollution, biodiversity, and climate change adaptation?

Continue to Module 4