Healthy, clean and productive marine ecosystems provide societal goods and benefits, support human well-being and enable economic sustainability and resilience. Ecosystem-based management, the ecosystem approach, social-ecological systems and other allied concepts all recognise that economic and social systems occur within, and are completely dependent on, the ecological systems that contain and support them. Biodiversity is vital for our marine ecosystems, both in the contributions it makes to society but also in its intrinsic value as a feature of our shared Earth.
The seas are a busy space and human activities, such as energy generation, minerals extraction, tourism, coastal development, trade and transport, fisheries, aquaculture, agriculture and waste management all place pressures on marine and coastal ecosystems - pressures that exist within an uncertain and challenging climate future - and these pressures undermine marine biodiversity and the many benefits that it provides. Marine conservation and restoration are solutions, but there are trade-offs against human needs for food/energy security and livelihoods, as well as wellbeing benefits that are not always compatible with nature-first actions.
This session explores what we know about the value of biodiversity, its connection to ecosystem services and benefits, and approaches for addressing the trade-offs between nature needs and human needs both now and into the future. We welcome presentations on topics addressing the values of biodiversity (ecological, economic, social/cultural), links between marine biodiversity and ecosystem services, impacts of human activities on ecosystem services, scenarios of what biodiversity/ecosystem services and society might look like in future and on the development or application of methods for decision-making on the preservation of marine biodiversity within our ocean-using societies.
This session will focus on the big question for marine environmental management, “how to protect and maintain the natural structure and function of marine ecosystems that lead to ecosystem services and deliver societal goods and benefits sustainably”?
The session will explore Social Ecological Systems, Ecosystem Based Management and the tools available to identify and navigate the trade-offs and conflicts involved in achieving conservation and restoration targets. It will also focus on the equity of existing, and proposed new, interventions and measures.
