Managing marine resources sustainably – But how do we know when marine management has been successful?

Abstract

Current marine environmental management is the ‘sustainable management of people and their marine activities’ to be achieved through ecosystem manipulation and activity control. Marine management per se needs to define who requires and can achieve a successfully managed environment, the tools and indicators for that management, the indications of success and the means of knowing that the environment has been successfully managed. Indicators of success require policies and plans, environmental targets and regulatory standards and guidelines, i.e. output controls such as those stipulated by legislation. It should aim for sustainable outcomes based on government policy, to satisfy public demands and using the advice and assessments by natural and social scientists. The inputs, outputs and outcomes should include scientific research and advice, reporting to the government and the public as well as compliance in programme performance evaluations. In this, there are three interested bodies: (i) those requiring a successfully managed environment such as the public; (ii) those responsible to carry-out and monitor the programmes and regulate humans and their activities as mandated by government such as administrators and regulators, and (iii) those implementing the management measures. Here, examples from Europe and North America but with relevance to all maritime states are used to emphasise that management success encompasses a well-defined planning cycle with a vision achieved as the result of objectives being met leading to actions carried out leading to outputs produced leading to outcomes achieved.