Abstract
The marine environment is particularly at risk from the intentional and unintentional introduction and spread of invasive alien species (IAS); preventing their introduction and spread from occurring is therefore, a key component in the on-going management of marine IAS. Ensuring legislation is coherent and consistent is essential to the success of managing the existing and future impacts of marine IAS. We explore the coherence (determined as consistency and interaction) of marine biosecurity legislation for IAS at different geopolitical scales. There was consistency between both the Bern Convention and Convention on Biological Diversity and European and national legislation that had been created in response. There was a lack of interaction evidenced by the Ballast Water Management Convention, which had not yet been transposed into regional (mainly European) or national legislation. Implementation measures such as legislation should be coherent as any failure in the chain could potentially weaken the overall effort to establish and maintain biosecurity and achieve behaviour change.
Highlights
Whilst most non-native species do not have impacts post introduc tion, a minority have the potential to become invasive and have negative environmental, social and economic impacts (Ricciardi and MacIsaac, 2010; IMO, 2011; Sambrook et al, 2014); hereafter referred to as invasive alien species (IAS)
All three in ternational legislation state that IAS are damaging to the environment, economy and society and need to be controlled and managed, there are no conflicts between the aims of the conventions
The Bern Convention covers the whole of Europe and is a binding legal instrument that sets out aims and objectives to conserve European wildlife and habitats
Summary
Whilst most non-native species do not have impacts post introduc tion, a minority have the potential to become invasive and have negative environmental, social and economic impacts (Ricciardi and MacIsaac, 2010; IMO, 2011; Sambrook et al, 2014); hereafter referred to as invasive alien species (IAS). Preventing the introduction of IAS is considered the most cost effective and efficient means to reduce economic, ecological, and eco nomic costs in the future. This is relevant to the marine environment where species are especially difficult to removed once established (Katsanevakis et al, 2013; Tidbury et al, 2016). Policy coherence is essential for successful implementation of policies to achieve interna tional and national goals and objectives (Howlett and Rayner, 2007). Coherence should achieve consistency (the ability of multiple policy tools to reinforce rather than undermine each other in the pursuit of policy goal) and positively interact (Howlett, 2018). Where there are positive interactions between policies, a positive result will occur
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
