2 posts tagged with "Marine Resources"

Marine and coastal biodiversity and ecosystem services are degraded in many areas worldwide due to human interference resulting from fishing, tourism, pollution, and mining. Guidelines for an evidence-based, participatory and community-led management approach ‘Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA)’ provides a planning and strategic approach to development of coastal cities and implementing Integrated Coastal Zone Management. Here we take note of the existing references of case studies that shows successful implementation in Fiji, Kenya and other countries in Asia and Africa. LMMA approach integrates concerns about the current state of degradation and ensures that ecological services of these resource systems are sustainably managed in the future by community driven efforts; with aspects of food security, resource conservation, local employment and income of local fishers and tourism operators embedded. We focus on an empirical assessment initiated though a collaborative effort to outline and set up guidelines for establishing a LMMA network for Inhambane, Mozambique in discussion with stakeholders (fishermen, tourism operators, private and community actors, and selected government officials). An outcome from the study was disseminated to local authorities to ensure that solutions for managing degradation coastal and marine ecosystems could be placed on priority as planning for implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14 and for creating coastal cities as sustainable economic hubs and resilient coastal communities.

There is a critical need to develop effective strategies for the long-term sustainability of Canada’s oceans. However, this is challenged by uncertainty over future impacts of global environmental and socioeconomic change on marine ecosystems, and how coastal communities will respond to these changes. Scenario analysis can address this uncertainty by exploring alternative futures for Canadian oceans under different pathways of climate change, economic development, social and policy changes. However, there has, to date, been no scenario analysis of Canada’s future ocean sustainability at a national scale. To facilitate this process, we review whether the literature on existing scenarios of Canada’s fisheries and marine ecosystems provides an integrative, social-ecological perspective about potential future conditions. Overall, there is sufficient national-level oceanographic data and application of ecosystem, biophysical, and socioeconomic models to generate projections of future ocean and socioeconomic trends in Canada. However, we find that the majority of marine-related scenario analyses in Canada focus on climate scenarios and the associated oceanographic and ecological changes. There is a gap in the incorporation of social, economic, and governance drivers in scenarios, as well as a lack of scenarios which consider the economic and social impact of future change. Moreover, available marine scenario studies mostly do not cover all three Canadian oceans simultaneously. To address these gaps, we propose to develop national-level scenarios using a matrix framework following the concept of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, which would allow a social-ecological examination of Canada’s oceans in terms of the state of future uncertainties.