By Tundi Agardy, MEAM Contributing Editor (tundiagardy [at] earthlink.net)
Integration is the cornerstone of EBM. The lack of it is why sectoral management typically fails to stem ecosystem decline - which, in turn, is why most everyone agrees that integration is necessary. But what, exactly, needs to be integrated in order to achieve EBM?
Editor's note: Joe Uravitch served as director of the US National Marine Protected Areas Center from 2000 to 2011. Now retired, he works part-time as a consultant on coastal and marine resource management issues.
By Joseph A. Uravitch
Editor's note: Charles Ehler, president of Ocean Visions (Paris, France), served as marine spatial planning consultant to the Aspen Institute's Commission on Arctic Climate Change and was co-author of UNESCO's guide to marine spatial planning, published in 2009 (www.unesco-ioc-marinesp.be/publications).
On 10 May, Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is hosting a symposium on how knowledge about food webs can be best integrated into marine EBM. Specifically the symposium is focusing on the movement of stable isotopes through food webs (www.csiro.au/org/Stable-Isotope-Symposium.html).
What are "stable isotopes"? For insights MEAM asked Beth Fulton, who leads the ecosystem modeling group in marine and atmospheric research at CSIRO.
The European Commission is gathering stakeholder feedback on the status and future of maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal zone management in Europe, including where EU action on these subjects would be most useful. The information, collected via online questionnaire, will be used as part of an impact assessment by the Commission and may inform the preparation of draft proposals on EU ocean governance.
Editor's note: The goal of The EBM Toolbox is to promote awareness of tools for facilitating EBM processes. It is brought to you by the EBM Tools Network, a voluntary alliance of tool users, developers, and training providers.
By Sarah Carr
Independent reviews of the Australian program to help fishers displaced by rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park show the program suffered both from uncontrolled costs and widespread dissatisfaction among stakeholders.
A Colombian MPA has taken legal action against the country's National Agency of Hydrocarbons (ANH) to stop undersea exploration for petroleum within the site's boundaries. Management of the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve and Marine Protected Area learned from the national news media in December that two areas of the MPA were auctioned by ANH in mid-2010 for exploration. The MPA is located in the San Andres Archipelago of the southwestern Caribbean.
On 1 January of this year, in a move to protect the world's last large stocks of tuna from overfishing, a 4.5 million-km2 area in the western tropical Pacific Ocean was closed to purse seine fishing. The vast closure, in which limited longlining will still be allowed, was designated by the eight nations that are Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), a subregional agreement for managing tuna.
Dear MPA News,