Sea-based measures represent a new way of dealing with eutrophication in the Baltic Sea. They refer to different technological innovations that may be implemented at sea to target pollution that has already been released, in contrast to reducing discharges from the original source on land. These measures are not subject to any specific regulation. The Chapter explores how marine environmental law operates in the absence of specific rules and how environmental law principles manage to fill legal gaps. Moreover, sea-based measures raise interesting issues linked to the balancing of interests, as the arguments both against and in favour of the measures are based on environmental protection, and as the environmental impact of the measures is uncertain. A framework for applying the precautionary approach while expanding knowledge on the impact attached to different measures, as developed within the dumping regime, is also explored.

The basic scope and characteristics of environmental law is a foundation for this book. Environmental law can take different forms and be seen as an area of law that touches upon many other fields of law with the primary aim of protecting the environment, animals, and human health. Over time environmental law have developed its own legal techniques, norms, approaches, and principles to match the dynamic and holistic perspectives of the ecosystems. The purpose of the book is to identify how law can be designed to match and contribute to social-ecological resilience. The aim is to present a new framework for creating and assessing environmental law in relation to resilience theories; however, the components will be based in current environmental laws (i.e., the specific characteristics of environmental law). This chapter aims to explain some of the fundaments of environmental law and review thecharacteristics that will form important components.

Adaptivity, flexibility, and transformability are fundamental features of resilience governance. These features represent the need for governance to match the constant movements of the ecosystem and the effects of pressures on the ecosystem. It is also through adaptive and flexible features that transformability can be created. Adaptive or flexible mechanisms within law matching such governance features, could be described as legal structures and measures that create space for adaptive procedures and flexible responses also within the legal regime. However, it must be noted that law could also create a kind of resistance to flexible changes in the social-ecological system. This could be regarded as one main function connected to the institutional structure and the social resilience that law creates, where stability over time and the potential to anticipate and prevent certain developments are central. International and EU law can be seen as rather adaptive and flexible in their inherent design.