Ecosystem-Based Management
“Ecosystem–based management (EBM) is an integrated approach to management that considers entire ecosystems, including humans. The goal of EBM is to maintain an ecosystem in a healthy, productive and resilient condition so that it can provide the services humans want and need. EBM differs from current approaches that usually focus on a single species, sector, activity or concern; it considers the cumulative impacts of different sectors.”—Scientific Consensus Statement on Marine Ecosystem Based Management (2005)
ELI’s Director of Oceans Programs, scientist and attorney Kathryn Mengerink, is leading an innovative project to develop methods and tools for EBM. Under her direction, ELI has begun the long and complex undertaking of implementing ocean and coastal EBM with a project to develop and distribute EBM governance tools. This began in October 2006, when ELI launched its project, Implementing Ecosystem-Based Management: Governance Gaps, Conflicts and Needs, to identify and develop practical legal and institutional approaches to EBM implementation.
In June 2009, ELI released Ocean and Coastal Ecosystem-Based Management: Implementation Handbook, which identifies successful approaches to implementing marine ecosystem-based management, describes their limitations, and highlights opportunities to apply them in the future. This Handbook provides a spectrum of examples that take steps toward EBM. In addition to the Handbook and research reports on EBM, ELI has produced a set of other documents, below, that support our work on the topic:
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