Social change requires the harnessing of social forces, and the more powerful the force, the more fundamental the change. Moral outrage, a yearning for justice, and the desire for connection are all forces that have propelled social change movements throughout history. They will continue to fuel social change now and in the future.
But there is a very powerful force shaping the world we live in today that is not yet aligned fully with the environmental values that many of us hold, and that is the search for profit and well being through the investment of capital and labor — the profit motive. Indeed, the profit motive has prevailed time and again over countervailing forces like ethical commitments to environmental stewardship, the desire for long-term economic well being, and even over the force of government regulation.
In a previous blogpost, I summarized a recent publication that lays out a strategy for aligning the profit motive with the conservation of coastal ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, storm surge protection, and recreational value — services that are usually unpriced by conventional markets, and so become subject to degradation. The goal is to reverse alarming trends in mangrove deforestation, salt marsh dredging, and nearshore pollution by shaping markets that value these services, allowing people to do well by doing good. Read More »
Good science should always guide policy. In the ocean, policy reflects decades of scientific work on single species and on single endpoints, like water quality. However, it is now clear that ocean ecosystems are more than the sum of their parts, and policy needs to catch up to this new scientific understanding.
Of course, we must continue to protect the aspects of ocean ecosystems that we value the most. Fisheries need catch limits to keep stocks at sustainable levels. Pollutants need caps to keep waters fishable and swimmable. Forestry and farming need best practices and standards to keep estuaries healthy. But it turns out that ocean ecosystems have tipping points – ecological thresholds beyond which they undergo dramatic changes.
Healthy and resilient ocean ecosystems function similar to the United States government’s system of checks and balances—different species do similar things but in slightly different ways, which help keep these systems both interconnected and even-keeled. However, when we reduce species populations so much they can no longer do their part, we alter the natural balance of the system, which can have grave effects.
Luxuriant kelp forests that support marine mammals and a myriad of other species provide us with various ecosystem services like seafood, agar (sugar made from kelp), recreation, and sheltering the coastline from waves. However, these habitats can turn to rocky barrens very rapidly when they reach their tipping points. We witnessed this in the 1800s when fur hunting became prevalent—decreasing the sea otter population. With fewer sea otter to consume urchins, urchins became overabundant, overgrazing the kelp and causing forests to disappear.
Fortunately, science is providing insights into the factors that make ocean ecosystems more capable of resisting these kinds of changes, and more able to bounce back when they are damaged; in other words, the attributes that make some systems more resilient than others. Having lots of species with different ecological jobs (biodiversity and niches) is very important, as is having several species doing the same job but in slightly different ways (functional redundancy). Lots of genetic diversity within species and populations is important as well. It’s a little like rocket science: rockets are complex systems that are made more robust and resilient (i.e., less likely to blow up) by building in redundant subsystems. Nature has done that one better by building in even more diversity, allowing coral reefs for example to recover from hurricanes and even volcanic eruptions that devastate human communities.
In an ocean in which the temperature, pH, currents, weather, and human uses are changing, it makes much more sense to manage for resilient ecosystems than manage for maximum sustainable yield of one species or another. Who knows what the next big impact to the ocean will be? We need to increase resiliency so that no matter what, ocean ecosystems can persist and continue to provide the many valuable ecosystem services upon which we depend. Our new paper draws on the science of ecosystem resilience and lays out a policy framework for achieving this goal.
The ocean is enormous, supporting a vast array of life while providing food, fuel, recreation, and spiritual rejuvenation. But efforts to conserve the ocean, though valiant, are meager compared to the scale of the threats to the ocean. Ocean conservation advocates have achieved many notable successes, such as dramatic reductions in certain kinds of pollution, the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and major improvements in fishery management in some areas of the world. However, a recent analysis that EDF participated in suggests that 40% of the ocean is still strongly impacted by a range of threats, including shipping, the modification of rivers and estuaries, coastal development, pollution, and overfishing. How can we scale conservation efforts up to match the ocean’s vastness and the severity of these threats?
To answer this question, we must first accurately diagnose the problem. Conventional markets, which drive so much of mass human behavior, only value a few of the many goods and services that the ocean provides, like fish and oil. The critically important ocean processes that produce fish, regulate the climate, assimilate wastes, and provide all of the other goods and services on which the diversity of ocean life and we humans depend are generally not valued by markets. Because markets see value only in parts of the ocean, and not in the whole, the valuable pieces are extracted and the rest is degraded.
Conservation has been pushing back against market forces, among the most powerful forces in the world, in the form of regulation. While regulations like water quality standards and MPAs can be very effective, they often depend on high levels of enforcement because they are working against market forces and the incentives to exploit valuable resources without stewarding the ecosystems that support them. Regulations in this context are often perceived as threats to livelihood and human welfare, resulting in opposition and conflict. It is not surprising that it typically takes many years and sometimes decades to get ocean conservation measures in place. Read More »
Published online November 16, 2012, in Ocean & Coastal Management
By Wesley S. Patrick & Lee R. Benaka
NOAA Fisheries, Office of Sustainable Fisheries
Fisheries operated under catch share management systems were more likely to stay within target catch limits and to stop overfishing than those operating under other management systems, according to a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) entitled “Estimating the Economic Impacts of Bycatch in US Commercial Fisheries” which was published online last month in Ocean & Coastal Management.
The study analyzed the impact of “management uncertainty” upon fishery performance in 17 U.S. fisheries covering 12 different species. It compares fisheries under catch share management systems with those operating under other types of fishery management in which landings are managed “in-season” or “post-season.” This study is one of the first to look at the impact of “management uncertainty” upon a fishery’s performance. “Management uncertainty” refers to the inability of fishery managers to accurately predict how the management techniques they employ will affect their ability to achieve targets such as catch limits.
The study found that a fishery’s ability to stay within targeted catch limits varied considerably, but those under catch shares exceeded catch limits the least. Catch share fisheries exceeded catch limits just 2% of the time, compared to 37% of the time for those managed in-season or post-season. Knowing that catch share-run fisheries are unlikely to exceed catch limits reduces uncertainty and allows managers to set catch limits closer to “true” targets, allowing fishermen to catch more fish while still protecting fish populations for the future.
In “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” author and journalist, Malcolm Gladwell explains how sociological changes often happen very quickly and unexpectedly. He describes a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”
It turns out that many natural ecosystems have tipping points too, called ecological thresholds. Healthy ocean ecosystems can resist change, exist in alternative states and recover from storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions – and even from human activities like pollution and fishing. Having more than one species that do similar things but in slightly different ways helps ecosystems stay healthy; i.e., makes them resilient. But when we reduce species so much that they can’t play their ecological roles or when we stress the system too much, these ecosystems can reach a tipping point and change rapidly from beautiful, productive systems to damaged systems that are incapable of creating the wonders and benefits they once produced. Read More »
The world’s fish stocks can be rebuilt to provide more nourishment and economic value to the millions of people who rely on the ocean for food—if we step up now and make aligning these incentives a global priority.
The magazine Science has published a study that provides new insights into thousands of fisheries where scientific data has not been historically available. These “data poor” fisheries make up a majority of the world’s catch, around 80 percent. According to this new research, many of these fisheries are facing collapse, but there is still time to turn the situation around. The study indicates that it is possible for fisheries to recover globally, which would increase the abundance of fish in the ocean by 56% and in some fisheries’ yields could more than double.
With these new assessments, fishery managers and world leaders can have a more comprehensive view of the status of our global fisheries. There are many new insights into previously unmeasured fisheries, using new methodology that can have enormous implications for managing the resource sustainably.
The report also provides some hope and insights on how the world can reverse these trends. Read More »
