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 the Ocean Program, 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.
Throughout the project, ELI collaborated with many EBM experts and met with various stakeholders to better understand EBM implementation mechanisms. ELI co-hosted the following three regional meetings in partnership with key ocean law and policy organizations:
- Dr. Richard McLaughlin (Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies) and ELI co-hosted Managing for a Healthy Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Tools at the Harte Research Institute in Corpus Christi, Texas, November 1-2, 2007.
- Dr. Harry N. Scheiber (Law of the Sea Institute in the Institute for Legal Research at UC Berkeley) and ELI co-hosted Managing for a Healthy California Current Ecosystem at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, April 28-29, 2008.
- Mr. Jay Odell (The Nature Conservancy), Dr. Biliana Cicin-Sain (Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy, University of Delaware), Mr. Tony MacDonald (Urban Coast Institute, Monmouth University, New Jersey), Ms. Kristen Fletcher (Coastal States Organization), Ms. Laura Cantral (Joint Ocean Commission Initiative) and ELI co-hosted the Mid-Atlantic Regional Ocean Forum at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, December 1-2, 2008. For a summary of this meeting and other materials, click here.
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, many of which were identified through working group meetings of EBM experts and regional ocean management meetings. 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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