The Issue of Diffuse Water Pollution by Katarina Eckerberg International agreements for the North and Baltic Seas set the goal to reduce by 50 per cent the loading of nitrogen and phosphorus from 1987 to 1995. Not surprisingly, this goal has not been achieved. Different strategies to combat diffuse source water pollution from agriculture and forestry are analysed from the perspective of local implementation, using six case studies in the riparian countries to compare how different policy instruments are used in areas of high pollution. Available policy instruments include regulative, economic and communicative instruments, which are often perceived to be on a scale from 'hard' to 'soft'. Even the regulations are, however, used softly in practice.
Voluntary measures dominate.
The most successful implementation occurs where economic incentives are significant. Most likely, the future will bear increasing political conflicts over which instruments are required to live up to the agreed policy goals. Answers can be suggested by identifying political and cultural factors which have effects on the agricultural pollution issue, and by adopting a policy network approach using the concepts of policy community and issue network. On the one hand, the main model of the Finnish agri-environmental policy has been stable. This is primarily explained by the strength of agricultural interests in the Finnish society.