The Great Bear Rainforest on Canada's west coast demonstrates how capacity to do large-scale, integrated management can be created and sustained. It is not a marine EBM project in the traditional sense: its focus in on the rainforest, not the adjacent coastal waters. But the initiative has much to offer the marine community in terms of lessons learned. Although full implementation remains to be carried out, these elements of necessary capacity for EBM are in place:
Editor's note: Fernando Tiburcio is president of PAMANA Ka Sa Pilipinas, a national alliance of community-based MPA managers in the Philippines. His e-mail is pamanakasapilipinas [at] gmail.com. Paul Watts is chair in Ethnoecology at Aurora State College of Technology in the Philippines. His e-mail is paulwatts52 [at] yahoo.com.
Dear MEAM Reader,
This is my second issue as editor of Marine Ecosystems and Management. I view the newsletter with great excitement, particularly the opportunity it offers to help bridge chasms between disciplines, as EBM requires. This includes linking the sometimes-isolationist marine community with the broader world of environmental management. Terrestrial managers have much to teach, and much to learn from, marine ecosystem-based managers.
In our previous issue (MEAM 1:2), there was an error in our identification of Michael Sissenwine, who authored the essay "Globalization and Scaling in Ecosystem-Based Management". He is a visiting scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the U.S. and a marine science consultant. He formerly served as director of scientific programs and chief science advisor for the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service.
Editor's note: The goal of The EBM Toolbox is to promote awareness of software tools for facilitating EBM processes, and to provide advice on using those tools effectively. It is brought to you by the EBM Tools Network (www.ebmtools.org), a voluntary alliance of leading tool users, developers, and training providers to promote awareness, development, and effective use of technology tools for EBM in coastal, marine, and watershed environments.
By Sarah Carr
Ecosystem-based management commonly involves "scaling up" from how other management practices have typically worked:
From single-species fisheries management to management of multi-species assemblages;
From looking at isolated drivers of change to considering all environmental and human impacts;
From design of individual protected areas to planning MPA networks; and
From conservation of a fragment of habitat to comprehensive spatial management.
The challenge of coordinating across scales in EBM is being met in different ways in different parts of the world. As highlighted in the preceding article, cross-scale EBM is being undertaken in West Africa using an MPA network as a starting point.
Editor's note: James Dobbin is a Canadian coastal planner with several decades of experience conducting coastal and marine assessment and management worldwide.
By James Dobbin
Editor's note: The goal of the following feature, The EBM Toolbox, is to promote awareness of technology tools that can facilitate EBM processes, and provide advice on using those tools effectively. It is brought to you by the EBM Tools Network (www.ebmtools.org), a voluntary alliance of leading tool users, developers, and training providers to promote awareness, development, and effective use of technology tools for EBM in coastal and marine environments and the watersheds that affect them.
Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is gaining acceptance around the world as a more holistic approach toward coastal and marine resource management. At the same time, agreement on the scope and implications of EBM remains elusive. We asked selected experts for their views on the challenges facing the EBM field:
By Tundi Agardy, Executive Director, Sound Seas, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
E-mail: tundiagardy [at] earthlink.net