AN ANALYSIS OF THE ECOSYSTEM-BASED MANAGEMENT APPROACH: THE ADVANTAGES AND CHALLENGES

In the 1960’s, the need to reduce the pressure and impacts of fisheries, alerted scientists to develop a tool to protect the environment and prevent fishery crashes (Ward and Hegerl, 2003; Browman and Stergious, 2004). The result was the Single Species approach (SS), which main goal was to manage populations for maximum outcome for humans. Nevertheless, in most of the cases, fish stocks have been harvested down to less than 1% of the biomass. As a consequence, single species management wasn’t practiced (Browman and Stergious, 2004) and there was the need for an ecological approach. In this matter, the Ecosystem-based management (EBM) approach was developed in the 80’s and has rapidly being adopted (Slocombe 1993). According to the IUCN, the EBM is “a process that integrates ecological, socioeconomic, and institutional factors into comprehensive analysis and action in order to sustain and enhance the quality of the ecosystems to meet current and future needs” (IUCN 2012). The EBM goal is to maintain an ecosystem in a healthy, productive and resilient condition considering human use and values so it can provide goods and services (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 2009; Browman and Stergious 2004; Clarke and Jupiter 2010; Witherell et al. 2000; Christensen et al., 1996; Brodziak and Link 2002;Leslie and McLeod 2007) achieving the desired social benefits (Lackey, 1998). The EBM is now considered a tool for marine and land conservation. In this matter, this essay addresses the scope of the implementation of EBM by analysing its pros and cons in the biological and socio-economic aspects.

The EBM approach is sometimes seen as too complicated to implement it effectively (Browman and Stergious 2004; Slocombe 1993). Since the environment is dynamic, the EBM is “a continuing, interactive process that learns and adapts over time” (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 2009; Ward and Hegerl 2003). This means, that EBM is not an established framework (Stein and Anderson 2002) and sometimes it can be challenging to include and manage the social benefits that people want. There are several ways to implement the EBM and could include technical measures, spatial management like protected areas, controls and systems of access rights (Carpenter et al., 2009). In this sense, by having a delimited area and zonation with different categories it is much likely to apply and enforce law and control (Ward and Hegerl 2003; Hooker and Gerber 2004; FAO 2002) ensuring that environmental services are maintained (Halpern et al., 2008). It enhances habitat protection, natural age-size-sex population structure, abundance and genetic diversity or food web structures (Browman and Stergious 2004) and species assemblages (Ward and Hegerl 2003). It is important to notice that the EBM “can protect species within their boundaries, and improve the condition of biodiversity within a few years of reserve establishment” (Ward and Hegerl 2003). Thus, the species richness biomass and and density are likely to increase.

On the other hand, because the ecosystem services are to be sustained over time, the ecosystems resilience will be enhanced and so, the capacity to keep functioning even when disturbed (Levin and Lubchenco, 2008; Leslie and McLeod 2007) guarantying the sustainable use of the environment. Yet, the EBM faces a “fundamental challenge [by] assessing the true value of these ecosystems and the services they generate, so that practical compromises can be made” (Baerbier et al., 2008). It is difficult to assess the real economical value because of the constant changes in nature and most of them are intangible. As a result, sometimes the goods and services can be underestimated and the overall goals to maintain it healthy may not be enough.

Scientific information is important for effective ecosystem management, but is only one element when considering humans as part of the ecosystem (Lackey 1998). On one hand this is really important because takes into consideration that anthropic activities play an important role in nature. Additionally, it is certain that the demand for the goods and services increases with time. So, it makes sustainable ecosystem management all more compelling and important (Christensen et al., 1996). Yet the proper role of humans in ecosystems is a topic of much debate (Christensen et al., 1996). There is the need to change

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