Implementation Of Ecosystem-based Management Research Articles

Marine ecosystem-based management: challenges remain, yet solutions exist, and progress is occurring

Marine ecosystem-based management (EBM) is recognized as the best practice for managing multiple ocean-use sectors, explicitly addressing tradeoffs among them. However, implementation is perceived as challenging and often slow. A poll of over 150 international EBM experts revealed progress, challenges, and solutions in EBM implementation worldwide. Subsequent follow-up discussions with over 40 of these experts identified remaining impediments to further implementation of EBM: governance; stakeholder engagement; support; uncertainty about and understanding of EBM; technology and data; communication and marketing. EBM is often portrayed as too complex or too challenging to be fully implemented, but we report that identifiable and achievable solutions exist (e.g., political will, persistence, capacity building, changing incentives, and strategic marketing of EBM), for most of these challenges and some solutions can solve many impediments simultaneously. Furthermore, we are advancing in key components of EBM by practitioners who may not necessarily realize they are doing so under different paradigms. These findings indicate substantial progress on EBM, more than previously reported.

Ecosystem-based Management through the lenses of International Seabed Authority stakeholders: current status, implications, and opportunities for the deep-sea mining regime in the Area

The ocean is threatened by human activities, which undermine the health of its ecosystems. To overcome this scenario, there is a converging understanding that a more encompassing approach, such as Ecosystem-based Management (EBM), is essential to manage human activities. EBM implementation in scenarios of limited knowledge and potentially irreversible impacts, such as deep-sea mining (DSM), is thus highly appropriate, although the translation of this approach into practice is not intuitive and rather challenging. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the organization with the mandate to award exploration and exploitation contracts for minerals on the international seabed, has recognized the need to incorporate EBM in its instruments but has not specified how to implement it. Through an online survey and in-depth interviews, ISA stakeholders have been inquired about their perception of the understanding, current status, implications, and opportunities of EBM for the deep-sea mining regime. The findings reveal that stakeholders perceive EBM as more related to ecological and impact aspects and less with participation, socio-ecological systems interlinks, and other forms of knowledge that are not scientific. Few respondents recognize EBM within the ISA, reporting its reflection in management instruments such as Regional Environmental Management Plans and Environmental Impact Assessments. No common definition exists, regarded as an obstacle to decision-making and EBM operationalization. According to them, opportunities to improve EBM implementation include collaboration with organizations already familiar with EBM, capacity development activities, workshops, and dedicated side events focusing on the issue. Finally, most of them recognize that a lack of consensus regarding EBM can impact decision-making and EBM operationalization, thus compromising ISA’s mandate. In this context, the clarification on what EBM entails for the seabed mining regime should be a matter of major interest to the ISA and all its stakeholders, as the mineral resources found in the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdictions (the Area) are the common heritage of humankind, and therefore, its maintenance and benefits must be ensured to future generations.

European Approaches Support an Essential Definition of Ecosystem-Based Management and Demonstrate Its Implementation for the Oceans

Unclear, contested definitions and high complexity have been used to explain why ecosystem-based management (EBM) has been hard to implement. This still seems to be a problem, judging from the unspecific references to it in recent international instruments and other approaches being preferred. This article argues that an essential definition of EBM that captures its indispensable roles can clarify its meaning. Beyond that, a wide diversity can be found due to adaptations to different ecological, social, and political contexts. In short, EBM entails managing human activities for sustainable use, so the cumulative impacts of uses are kept below critical thresholds for the ecosystem to be managed. The specific integrative role of EBM is integration across ecosystem components, governance arrangements, and broad strands of knowledge in support of management. This understanding should not be controversial and is supported by approaches to implementing EBM in Norway and the EU. Their approaches to EBM for the oceans share key characteristics: They operate on similar spatial scales; use strategic planning; define cyclic, adaptive processes with similar content; and apply management by objectives. With the proclaimed nature crisis, renewed attention to the definition and implementation of EBM is needed.

Implementation of integrated ecosystem assessments in the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea—conceptualizations, practice, and progress

Abstract With increasing activities of multiple sectors in marine spaces, management of marine social–ecological systems requires more holistic approaches. Adopting such an approach, however, presents difficult institutional and disciplinary challenges. Here, we use the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) as a case study on the implementation of ecosystem-based management (EBM) and integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs). ICES includes EBM and IEAs in its Science Priorities and established IEA Working Groups (WGs) to carry out regional IEAs. But to what degree does this IEA WG work follow best practices? We examine policy documents, academic literature, and interview data from chairs of all IEA WGs. Results indicate mixed success. All groups acknowledge the holistic goals of IEA, and many use the IEA model as laid out by Levin et al. However, we found a significant variation in the degree to which the full model is applied. We identified two primary areas for improvement: (1) integration of social and economic issues and (2) involvement of stakeholders. We offer examples of how WGs have been making progress towards full IEAs, discuss how ICES can further support this transition, and suggest lessons with respect to the adoption of EBM and IEAs more broadly.

Monitoring the Health of Coastal Environments in the Pacific Region-A Review.

Coastal areas provide important ecological services to populations accessing, for example, tourism services, fisheries, minerals and petroleum. Coastal zones worldwide are exposed to multiple stressors that threaten the sustainability of receiving environments. Assessing the health of these valuable ecosystems remains a top priority for environmental managers to ensure the key stressor sources are identified and their impacts minimized. The objective of this review was to provide an overview of current coastal environmental monitoring frameworks in the Asia-Pacific region. This large geographical area includes many countries with a range of climate types, population densities and land uses. Traditionally, environmental monitoring frameworks have been based on chemical criteria set against guideline threshold levels. However, regulatory organizations are increasingly promoting the incorporation of biological effects-based data in their decision-making processes. Using a range of examples drawn from across the region, we provide a synthesis of the major approaches currently being applied to examine coastal health in China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, we discuss some of the challenges and investigate potential solutions for improving traditional lines of evidence, including the coordination of regional monitoring programs, the implementation of ecosystem-based management and the inclusion of indigenous knowledge and participatory processes in decision-making.

Cross-Sector Ecosystem-Based Management Principles and Implementation Steps: The Nigerian Perspective

The complex economic, social, and environmental interactions in coastal areas require multi-sectoral approaches to understanding and designing effective management measures. The existing traditional management approaches fail to successfully identify economic, social, and ecological values and incorporate them into marine and estuarine ecosystems management. Therefore, there is a need for a holistic approach to help understand the socio-ecological system complexity and assist in policy and management of the marine and estuarine ecosystems. In recent years, Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) has been relevant and implemented in many case studies of marine management and conservation of natural resources. However, there is a lack of consensus about its definition and key principles, which has affected its practical application in research. This article offers insight into EBM fundamental principles and steps to disaggregate ecosystems and resource management activities into a sequence of tangible levels of achievement and close the management gaps in the traditional approaches. We examined the principles and steps in EBM theoretical literature, covering a range of published sources across disciplines and continents. Based on the appearance frequency in literature, seven key EBM principles were identified and presented in this article. The steps to address the management gap in the traditional approaches and to implement EBM based on the identified principles were articulated further, especially in the Nigerian coastal management perspective. This article also examines the cases of implementation of EBM in the past and predicts the possible direction of EBM in the future if more attention is given to finding a center balance between its many principles and improving stability in its application in future research.

The implementation of ecosystem-based management in New Zealand – A Māori perspective

The successful implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBM) in New Zealand's marine estate is dependent upon the establishment of a new Māori-Crown (New Zealand Government) governance arrangement. It would be the responsibility of both Māori and the Crown to partner in the identification and selection of stakeholders to be included in EBM processes, and to regulate activity within various jurisdictions as per recommendations from stakeholders. The creation of new Crown-Māori governing authorities requires an adjustment of existing jurisdictions and functions of central government, local government, iwi and hapū (Māori tribes/clans) to align with actual ecological and social functions at different scales. We conclude that with such jurisdictions in place then EBM will align with traditional Māori governing and property right systems and New Zealand's Te Tiriti (Treaty)-based constitutional foundations. Finally, we determine that traditional Māori hui protocols may offer an excellent foundation for EBM decision-making processes to ‘pull’ people out of their vested position and interest to arrive at evidence-based positions reflective of ecological and social good.

Better Together: The Uses of Ecological and Socio-Economic Indicators With End-to-End Models in Marine Ecosystem Based Management

Ecological and socio-economic indicators are used as proxies for attributes of ecosystems and human communities, respectively. End-to-end models are used to predict how ecosystems will respond to alternative management actions and changing environmental conditions. Despite the importance of these two tools for Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM), there has been limited integration of ecological indicators directly into end-to-end models; the former are typically calculated post hoc with output from the latter. Here we explore how ecological indicators can be better incorporated into end-to-end models and examine the importance of this union with regards to cumulative impacts and indirect effects, setting management objectives, practical indicator selection, and applications to management. We conclude that the inclusion of ecological indicators in end-to-end models is not only feasible, but provides needed guidance on describing ecosystem status relative to strategic as well as tactical ecosystem-level management goals, and will escalate the implementation of EBM.

The Importance of Brokers in Collaborative Marine Ecosystem-Based Management of Social Ecological Systems

Practitioners play a critical yet largely unexamined role in translating collaborative, ecosystem-based management (EBM) for social-ecological systems from theory to practice. We paired mental models and social network analytical methods and applied them to two cases of marine EBM in Rhode Island and New York, focusing on practitioners themselves, to understand the relationship between practitioners’ mental models of marine ecosystems and the extent and nature of collaboration within each network. Mental models analysis was used to assess the comprehensiveness and balance of practitioners’ mental models, and social network analysis was used to assess the role and influence of practitioners within each network. A comparative statistical analysis was then performed to understand the relationship between mental models and network measures. Research revealed a statistically significant correlation between practitioners’ mental model comprehensiveness and practitioners’ influence within the network. In other words, practitioners with comprehensive mental models of the ecosystem for which they were planning were found to act as “brokers,” connecting those who were not otherwise connected, bridging jurisdictions, sectors, and disciplines. Results underscore the importance of brokers in achieving the collaborative and integrated goals of EBM and suggest the need for greater attention to practitioners’ role in EBM implementation.

The human side of marine ecosystem-based management (EBM): ‘Sectoral interplay’ as a challenge to implementing EBM

Although ecosystem-based management (EBM) has been adopted by many management organisations in principle, operationalising EBM has been problematic. A mismatch in institutional arrangements, created by the traditional sectoral focus of marine environmental and resource management, may be one factor acting against EBM implementation. To investigate this potential issue, this study focused on ‘sectoral interplay’, the challenges and tensions that prevent ‘whole of government’ cooperation, political consensus among conflicting user and interest groups, and collaboration between government and stakeholders that preconditon implementation of EBM. Four key challenges/tensions to sectoral interplay in marine EBM were found, including: governance structures and mechanisms, communication and sharing, participation and exclusion and fragmentation. Several ways in which these challenges/tensions could be addressed are proposed such as creating co-ordinating structures which operate across sectors and clarifying mandates and precedence between decision-making agencies. There are myriad case study examples from which to learn how to manage, and how not to manage, sectoral interplay in marine governance, and this should be the focus of future research.

Ocean Ecosystem-Based Management Mandates and Implementation in the North Atlantic

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) necessarily requires a degree of coordination across countries that share ocean ecosystems, and among national agencies and departments that have responsibilities relating to ocean health and marine resource utilization. This requires political direction, legal input, stakeholder consultation and engagement, and complex negotiations. Currently there is a common perception that within and across national jurisdictions there is excessive legislative complexity, a relatively low level of policy coherence or alignment with regards to ocean and coastal EBM, and that more aligned legislation is needed to accelerate EBM adoption. Our Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance (AORA) task group was comprised of a small, focused and interdisciplinary mix of lawyers, social scientists, and natural scientists from Canada, the USA, and the EU. During a four-day workshop, we characterized, compared, and synthesized the mandates that govern marine activities and ocean stressors relative to facilitating EBM in national and international waters of the North Atlantic. We identified formal mandates across jurisdictions and, where possible, policy and other non-regulatory mandates. We found that irrespective of the detailed requirements of legislation or policy across AORA jurisdictions, or the efficacy of their actual implementation, most of the major ocean pressures and uses posing threats to ocean sustainability have some form of coverage by national or regional legislation. The coverage is, in fact, rather comprehensive. Still, numerous impediments to effective EBM implementation arise, potentially relating to the lack of integration between agencies and departments, a lack of adequate policy alignment, and a variety of other socio-political factors. We note with concern that if challenges regarding EBM implementation exist in the North Atlantic, we can expect that in less developed regions where financial and governance capacity may be lower, that implementation of EBM could be even more challenging.

Against all odds? Implementing a policy for ecosystem-based management of the Barents Sea

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) should lead to policy that effectively addresses major negative impacts on the ecosystem in order to solve the problems identified. So far, there is little empirical knowledge about what is conducive to the formulation and implementation of such policies. The article suggests that implementation theory is an appropriate theoretical platform for acquiring such knowledge. General implementation theory is a starting point that gradually can be specified for implementation of EBM through carefully selected case studies. The article describes the theory and demonstrates its applicability by analysing the implementation of the measures in the Barents Sea Management Plan. Despite a policy design that violated several traditional recommendations for successful implementation, most measures in the plan were actually put into practice. The explanation lies in the Norwegian political-administrative system, the mobilization of knowledge, the collaboration created by involving a group of ministries and the authoritative handling of conflicts by the cabinet. All these explanations refer to processes occurring during the formulation of the policy, thus illustrating the need for a broader focus than the implementation process itself when studying policy implementation. The political leadership of the Norwegian government was decisive, demonstrating that EBM can be effectively implemented in a top-down fashion.

Key species and impact of fishery through food web analysis: A case study from Baja California Sur, Mexico

Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) aims to support the protection of natural ecosystems and to improve economic activities. It requires considering all of the actors interacting in social-ecological systems (e.g., fish and fishers) in the understanding that their interplay determines the dynamic behavior of the single actors as well as that of the system as a whole. Connections are thus central to EBM. Within the ecological dimension of socio-ecological systems, interactions between species define such connections. Understanding how connections affect ecosystem and species dynamics is often impaired by a lack of data. We propose food web network analysis as a tool to help bridge the gap between EBM theory and practice in data-poor contexts, and illustrate this approach through its application to a coastal marine ecosystem in Baja California Sur, Mexico. First, we calculated centrality indices to identify which key (i.e., most central) species must be considered when designing strategies for sustainable resource management. Second, we analyzed the resilience of the system by measuring changes in food web structure due to the local extinction of vulnerable species (i.e., by mimicking the possible effect of excessive fishing pressure). The consequences of species removals were quantified in terms of impacts on global structural indices and species' centrality indices. Overall, we found that this coastal ecosystem shows high resilience to species loss. We identified species (e.g., Octopus sp. and the kelp bass, Paralabrax clathratus) whose protection could further decrease the risk of potential negative impacts of fishing activities on the Baja California Sur food web. This work introduces an approach that can be applied to other ecosystems to aid the implementation of EBM in data-poor contexts.

Key principles of ecosystem‐based management: the fishermen's perspective

AbstractDespite the growing popularity of ecosystem‐based management (EBM) in national legislation and in research and institutional literature, there is often an implementation gap ‘on the ground’, impeding widespread adoption in fisheries. This gap reflects in part the differing understandings of EBM held by fishermen and by management institutions. To explore and seek to close this gap, the underlying principles of EBM considered priorities by fishermen were systematically compared with the priorities identified in the published literature. The fishermen's priorities were determined by asking Atlantic Canadian fishermen to identify the EBM principles they consider most important. Four priority principles were identified: Sustainability, Stakeholder Involvement, Develop Long‐Term Objectives and Use of All Forms of Knowledge. The latter two were not frequently noted as priorities in the literature, while some literature priorities were less commonly chosen by fishermen, indicating a significant difference in perspectives on EBM. The rationale for fishermen's choice of priorities was explored by analysing the fishery management issues they raised – many directly connected to the above four priorities. In addition, another principle, Commit to Principles of Equity, often arose as an implicit priority among fishermen. We suggest that success in implementation of EBM may depend on reconciling differing priorities among its underlying principles, and combining knowledge and expertise from fishermen with research and institutional sources. The comparative methodology used here, which could be replicated elsewhere, should lead to better recognition of local challenges in EBM implementation and encourage support for EBM, to further its contribution to sustainable fisheries.

An Integrated Coral Reef Ecosystem Model to Support Resource Management under a Changing Climate.

Millions of people rely on the ecosystem services provided by coral reefs, but sustaining these benefits requires an understanding of how reefs and their biotic communities are affected by local human-induced disturbances and global climate change. Ecosystem-based management that explicitly considers the indirect and cumulative effects of multiple disturbances has been recommended and adopted in policies in many places around the globe. Ecosystem models give insight into complex reef dynamics and their responses to multiple disturbances and are useful tools to support planning and implementation of ecosystem-based management. We adapted the Atlantis Ecosystem Model to incorporate key dynamics for a coral reef ecosystem around Guam in the tropical western Pacific. We used this model to quantify the effects of predicted climate and ocean changes and current levels of current land-based sources of pollution (LBSP) and fishing. We used the following six ecosystem metrics as indicators of ecosystem state, resilience and harvest potential: 1) ratio of calcifying to non-calcifying benthic groups, 2) trophic level of the community, 3) biomass of apex predators, 4) biomass of herbivorous fishes, 5) total biomass of living groups and 6) the end-to-start ratio of exploited fish groups. Simulation tests of the effects of each of the three drivers separately suggest that by mid-century climate change will have the largest overall effect on this suite of ecosystem metrics due to substantial negative effects on coral cover. The effects of fishing were also important, negatively influencing five out of the six metrics. Moreover, LBSP exacerbates this effect for all metrics but not quite as badly as would be expected under additive assumptions, although the magnitude of the effects of LBSP are sensitive to uncertainty associated with primary productivity. Over longer time spans (i.e., 65 year simulations), climate change impacts have a slight positive interaction with other drivers, generally meaning that declines in ecosystem metrics are not as steep as the sum of individual effects of the drivers. These analyses offer one way to quantify impacts and interactions of particular stressors in an ecosystem context and so provide guidance to managers. For example, the model showed that improving water quality, rather than prohibiting fishing, extended the timescales over which corals can maintain high abundance by at least 5–8 years. This result, in turn, provides more scope for corals to adapt or for resilient species to become established and for local and global management efforts to reduce or reverse stressors.

Managing catch of marine megafauna: Guidelines for setting limit reference points

Limit reference points (LRPs) for catch, which correspond to thresholds to undesirable population or ecosystem states, offer a consistent, objective approach to management evaluation and prioritization across fisheries, species, and jurisdictions. LRPs have been applied successfully to manage catch of some marine megafauna (elasmobranchs, marine reptiles, seabirds, and marine mammals) in some jurisdictions, such as the use of Potential Biological Removal (PBR) to manage incidental mortality of marine mammals under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act. However, implementation of ecosystem-based management is still in its infancy globally, and LRPs have not yet been widely adopted for marine megafauna, particularly for incidental catch. Here, guidelines are proposed for estimating catch LRPs for marine megafauna, with particular attention to resolving common technical and political challenges, including (1) identifying management units, population thresholds, and risk tolerances that align with common conservation goals and best practices, (2) choosing catch LRP estimators, (3) estimating input parameters such as abundance and productivity, (4) handling uncertainty, and (5) dealing with mismatches between management jurisdictions and population boundaries. The problem of cumulative impacts across sectors is briefly addressed. These guidelines, grounded in marine policy, science, precedent, and lessons learned, should facilitate wider application of catch LRPs in evaluation and management of fisheries impacts on marine megafauna, in support of global commitments to conserve biodiversity and manage fisheries responsibly.

Un modelo cualitativo de la comunidad biológica del Norte del Golfo de California, México: posibles efectos de la explotación pesquera en el ecosistema

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is one of the main paradigms under which the world’s fisheries have been redesigned. However, successful implementation of EBM has been limited due to the inherent complexity of ecological systems as well as the need to have enough information to build and analyze complex models. To successfully implement EBM in fisheries, countries such as Mexico need to design and promote management tools consistent with their social and natural context in a way that they can take advantage of the capabilities of their fishery systems. In this paper we used a qualitative model (Loop Analysis) to examine the ecosystem implications of fishery on some members of a marine community. A model for the biological community of the Northern Gulf of California (NGC) was constructed, based on six fishery groups and a conservation group. Model predictions allowed assessing both direct and indirect effects from harvesting different fishery groups, as well as identifying those fisheries that might present a conflict when operating simultaneously. The qualitative nature of the model allowed incorporating local ecological knowledge (LEK) as a source of information, fostering the future involvement of stakeholders in the design of management strategies. The proposed ideas may be useful to generate goals regarding resource exploitation and conservation and also provide a guide to generate management strategies based on the knowledge of the ecosystem.

Baltic Sea ecosystem-based management under climate change: Synthesis and future challenges.

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) has emerged as the generally agreed strategy for managing ecosystems, with humans as integral parts of the managed system. Human activities have substantial effects on marine ecosystems, through overfishing, eutrophication, toxic pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change. It is important to advance the scientific knowledge of the cumulative, integrative, and interacting effects of these diverse activities, to support effective implementation of EBM. Based on contributions to this special issue of AMBIO, we synthesize the scientific findings into four components: pollution and legal frameworks, ecosystem processes, scale-dependent effects, and innovative tools and methods. We conclude with challenges for the future, and identify the next steps needed for successful implementation of EBM in general and specifically for the Baltic Sea.

Conceptualizing Coastal Ecosystem-Based Management: A Mental Models Approach

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is widely touted as the preferred approach to coastal and environmental management, yet there are relatively few examples of this approach in practice. One possible reason is that this approach places extreme mental demands on practitioners. Mental models are individuals’ internal conceptualizations of external problems or phenomena, and are important because they inform communication and decision making. Thus, an analysis of mental models can provide insights into the cognitive demands that EBM places on participants and can suggest methods for improving EBM implementation. We applied mental models analysis to EBM by studying coastal management practitioners who were involved in cases of coastal EBM planning in the states of Rhode Island and New York. Here we present the results of this research to provide insight into the characteristics of practitioners’ mental models of coastal ecosystems and discuss the application of our novel mental models methodology in future research and practice.

Ecosystem-based management in challenging conditions: implications of a case study from north-eastern Turkey

This paper studies ways to implement ecosystem-based management (EBM) regardless of data and governance conditions. It focuses on a case study from Turkey and considers how EBM can be implemented under certain specific challenging conditions. The case study provides conceptual context diagrams of actual and hypothetical situations and then compares them using soft systems methodology. This comparison emphasizes the need for a firm political will that fully enforces regulations on the protection of water resources. The paper also recommends a productive stakeholder engagement that empowers locals and uses local knowledge to meet information requirements for progress towards EBM implementation under challenging conditions.