Abstract
Everyone agrees that the oceans should be used in a sustainable way, but there is no agreement on what this means, and this critically important concept has been devalued to the extent that it is typically a generic term for “greenness”. Problems include the lack of clear criteria for ecological sustainability, and that the definitions used for fisheries and other ecosystem components differ.The defining feature of “sustainability” as a concept is that it includes judgements about the future, as well as the present. Sustainable use can be assessed based on whether uses have impacts which would constrain future generations by preventing recovery of the environment, to a pre-use state, in a societally acceptable timescale. We present a practical approach to the assessment of ecological sustainability, based on its original roots in intergenerational equity, and which use the same criteria for all uses of the oceans.
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