The Working Group on Cumulative Effects Assessments in Management (WGCEAM) was es-tablished to develop a common framework for cumulative assessments to be applied in the con-text of ecosystem-based management.
The objective was to develop a cumulative effects assessment framework to inform ecosystem-based management initiatives and demonstrate its application through regional case studies. Within the context of environmental policies, blue growth, and regional conventions, the frame-work is intended to inform strategic aspects of planning and management processes such as ma-rine spatial planning and integrated marine management. It starts with the need to identify pri-orities across of the causal relationships between activities, their pressures on ecosystem compo-nents within the boundaries of an assessment area. The priority causal relationships are then used to establish vulnerability profiles based on exposure and effect potential calculation. Sub-sequently, exposure and effect potential clusters are used to characterize the pressures that should be subjected to management. Ultimately, the pressures based on the vulnerability profile of ecosystem components can be used to inform regulatory advisory processes for the activities generating these pressures. The case studies demonstrate that the framework can be used as guidance in a variety of impacts risk assessments for species and habitats in the North Sea, the German North Sea, and the Celtic Sea. The Canadian case studies also show that the framework does work for regulatory advisory processes to assess environmental impacts and the reliability and the effectiveness of technical measures. Guided by this framework, future work should be addressed through specific expert groups given the different management context and objectives that require.