Marine spatial planning and ocean accounting: Synergistic tools enhancing integration in ocean governance

Abstract

Ocean decision-makers are tasked with balancing social, economic, and environmental considerations when addressing complex policy challenges and achieving strategic objectives, such as conservation targets, or sustainable and ocean-based economic development agendas. Like many common environmental assets, oceans have been impacted by a history of imperfect governance resulting in substantial negative consequences for these important socio-ecological systems. Aligning and managing multiple trade-offs between policy targets for the management of human activities in the marine domain has been increasingly attempted using Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). More recently, Ocean Accounting (OA) has appeared as a framework that extends national, environmental, and ecosystem accounting, and provides a structure to integrate the information describing ocean ecosystems and their changing relationships with society and the economy. Globally, MSP is therefore employed to prioritise actions towards strategic objectives, while OA is being developed to centralise, standardise, and integrate ocean information. As awareness of human dependence on healthy ocean ecosystems has increased, the use of both MSP and OA has grown rapidly across the world, and intersections between the two frameworks, both geographically and theoretically are emerging. To inform both MSP and OA communities of practice, this paper explores their role in strategic ocean governance, and how synergies may be enhanced to further an understanding of complex ocean systems. Thoughtfully aligned, the two frameworks might work together with OA providing dynamic inputs to an adaptive MSP process. The early recognition of synergies between the two frameworks, and their potential for co-development, is considered imperative to advance effective ocean governance.