Download Section One: Introduction - Coral Reef Targeted Research

Section One: Introduction
Historically coastal and marine ecosystems have been an integral part of coastal
communities. Coastal ecosystems provide natural protection from extreme events and
contribute to food security, as well as being a strong point of cultural connection. However,
humans have not easily or intuitively related to marine ecosystems and the scales of space
and time underlying them (Kenchington 2003: 42).
As marine resources become depleted through human practices such as overfishing,
pollution and destruction of habitats and, through environmental factors including climate
change and ocean acidification, the management of these human activities and
environmental impacts on the coastal areas and in-shore waters are becoming increasingly
complex. Furthermore, the involvement of numerous stakeholders, with varying levels of
engagement, and an array of objectives focusing on utilising the natural and cultural
resources found in the coastal areas to their personal advantage, further adds to the
complexity.
Today, over one-half of the world’s population – more than 3.6 billion people – live within
100 kilometres of the world’s coastlines. Two out of three of the world’s cities of over 2.5
million inhabitants are located in coastal regions. The pressures and transformations on the
coastal landscape are increasing, particularly as coastal and near-shore marine ecosystems
continue to provide a vast array of ecosystem goods and services to contemporary
communities.
Coastal and near-shore resources are limited and are becoming rapidly depleted in most
cases due to population increases, migration to the coastal areas, increased mechanisms of
fishing practices and the need for communities to move from a subsistence society into a
cash society. The scale and processes of these ecosystems, their linkages to the land and
the intertwined interests of sectors and jurisdictions raise the need for effective
mechanisms of coordination or integration of policy and management for human activities
and impacts (Kenchington 2003: 42).
In order to bring about a holistic view of both the terrestrial impacts on coastal and marine
ecosystems, and the environmental and marine impacts, along with the overarching
frameworks of institutional structures such as policy and legislation – many countries are
now turning to Ecosystem-based Management as an approach to address these increasing
and complex challenges.
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Ecosystem-based Management in Context
For more than a millennium the goods and services provided by marine ecosystems have
underpinned human economic activity (Clark, 1952). In the 11 th century dried fish from the
North East Atlantic became a major item of European trade. By the late 15 th century
European boats were fishing in the north west Atlantic and by the late 19th century there
were many local examples of fisheries collapse and estuarine and coastal degradation.
Despite this, until well into the 20th century the scale of the oceans was generally regarded
as so great that human activities were unlikely to have significant widespread impacts
(Cushing, 1988, Roberts, 2007). Against this background there is a long history of sectoral
and often localized management of coastal and marine activities such as fishing, shipping
and coastal engineering.
By the mid 20th century new technologies were enabling seabed oil drilling and other new
uses as well as the expansion of longstanding uses. It was also apparent that pollution from
marine shipping, oil exploration and production and activities on land could have major
impacts on marine ecosystems. The first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea
was held in 1958 and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force
in 1994. This provided the basis for developing management approaches to address matters
beyond those of the original sectoral players and at scales reflecting those of marine
ecosystems.
At the international level, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
(FAO) has promoted development of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries, recognizing
the need to maintain ecosystem integrity and to avoid irreversible impacts (FAO 2003). The
UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO) addresses maritime safety, pollution
prevention and shipping lane management, including provisions for areas to be avoided by
shipping on the grounds of environmental sensitivity. The International Union for the
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has focused largely on Marine Protected Areas recognizing
the need to make provisions for sustainable fisheries (Kelleher, 1999).
Similar allocations of responsibilities apply in many nations where development of
management regimes for marine areas is typically a process of tension between regimes
developed from traditional sectoral approaches to management and those developed to
address conservation. There are many common features but there is considerable confusion
in terminologies and strategic approaches. By 2006 a World Bank report was able to list 28
acronyms for marine management areas including ecosystem-based management.
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Managing the sea versus the land
There are two substantial differences that have to be addressed in transferring terrestrial
management principles to marine ecosystems.
The first is the degree of physical and biological interconnection. Seawater transports
nutrients, dissolved gases, silts and pollutants. It sustains life for bacteria, plants and
animals ranging from single cells to great whales.
The flow of seawater is dynamic, subject to daily changing tidal movements, ocean currents,
and the effects of storms and occasionally of tsunamis caused by rare seabed tectonic
events. The water mass is driven by currents and tides and coastal waters receive the runoff
from land. Seawater has a density 800 times that of air, and a physical and chemical stability
that makes it a benign medium for cellular life. It provides active third dimension mass
transport that feeds and links species and ecosystems.
Seawater is a habitat supporting a diverse ecosystem comprising plants and animals that
pass their entire life cycles floating or swimming. It is also the supporting habitat of the
larval or distribution stages of species that settle or depend on the seabed. It carries the
food of filter feeders and predators swimming and drifting in the water column and those
species that use coastal shelter or areas above high tide for feeding, mating or nursery
purposes. The boundaries of many marine eco-regions are invariably dependent on the
strength and direction of currents.
On land most water flows down catchments to the sea. Reversal of flows or cross flows
between catchments is rare. There is little passive mass transport and no capacity for plants
or animals to pass their entire life cycle in the air column. Most of the nutrients at a site are
derived from the underlying soil, or carried in surface water flows from areas higher in the
catchment. Typically habitats, ecological regions and potential forms of human land use are
closely linked to surface soils and underlying geology.
The second substantial difference is the legal nature of marine jurisdictions. In most
systems derived from Roman Law and in international law, the seas and their resources are
common properties with rights for all to use the marine space and harvest resources subject
to responsibility to maintain and not to damage common properties. In effect the onus is
on intending users to demonstrate that the conduct of their activities do damage the
commons. This is generally addressed by national or international sectoral legislation
setting terms and conditions for uses or purposes of entry. This does not confer individual
or group’s perpetual title to areas of the sea or seabed although license for permit holders
may have common law entitlement to compensation for financial losses in the event of
withdrawal of permission.
Boundaries may be defined in relation to geographic coordinates or fixed points on land but
typically these bear little relationship to the physical and biological forces driving marine
ecosystems and at any point the seabed and the water column above it contain at least two
biological communities and may sustain several simultaneous human uses.
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On land, activities are managed generally through a process of ownership of land that flows
from the relatively coherent linkage between surface geology, bioregions and potential
human uses. Boundaries are easily defined, if necessary with a fence or barrier.
Landholders have rights to act as they choose in management of their land provided their
actions do not unreasonably affect the rights of other landholders. The practice of separate,
or sectoral management of adjacent properties and a limited suite of land uses is reflected
in the aphorism “Good fences make good neighbours.”
The scale and connectivities of marine ecosystems and human impacts present a major
challenge for sectorally compartmentalised governance. However this can be addressed
where a mandatory framework can be created so that the individual powers and programs
of sectors are subject to an integrating framework that addresses ecosystem capacities and
sustainability of human uses and impacts. In this situation many of the practices of
terrestrial planning and management can be applied in the marine context. This may be
achieved through specific legislation as in the case of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine
Park Act (1975) which provides a regulatory framework for conservation and reasonable, or
sustainable multiple use of a specific region (Lawrence et al 2002). More usually it requires
direct involvement of head of government powers and for nations sharing waters of a large
marine ecosystem extension to intergovernmental agreements.
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What is Ecosystem-based Management
Ecosystem-based Management involves the creation of a consistent overarching framework
within which a range of sector agencies and interests are committed to work together to
achieve long-term sustainability of human uses and impacts consistent with the
maintenance of ecosystem processes and conservation of biological diversity.
Whereas in the past management approaches limited themselves to sectoral approaches,
Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) considers the whole ecosystem, including humans
and the environment, rather than managing one issue or resource in isolation (Ecosystembased Management Tools Network: http://www.ebmtools.org/; Accessed 10 March 2009).
Specifically, ecosystem-based management:
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Emphasises the protection of ecosystem structure, functioning and key processes;
Is placed-based in focusing on a specific ecosystem and the range of activities
affecting it;
Explicitly accounts for the interconnectedness within systems, recognising the
importance of interactions between many target species or key services and other
non-target species;
Acknowledge interconnectedness among systems, such as between air, land and sea
and integrates ecological, social, economic, and institutional perspectives,
recognising their strong interdependencesi.
Ecosystem-based Management includes the following elements1:
1) Sustainability. Ecosystem management does not focus primarily on "deliverables" but
rather regards intergenerational sustainability as a precondition.
2) Goals. Ecosystem management establishes measurable goals that specify future
processes and outcomes necessary for sustainability.
3) Sound ecological models and understanding. Ecosystem management relies on
research performed at all levels of ecological organization.
4) Complexity and connectedness. Ecosystem management recognizes that biological
diversity and structural complexity strengthen ecosystems against disturbance and
supply the genetic resources necessary to adapt to long-term change.
5) The dynamic character of ecosystems. Recognizing that change and evolution are
inherent in ecosystem sustainability, ecosystem management avoids attempts to
"freeze" ecosystems in a particular state or configuration.
6) Context and scale. Ecosystem processes operate over a wide range of spatial and
temporal scales, and their behaviour at any given location is greatly affected by
1 Ecosystem based Management: http://ecosystembasedmanagement.com/; Accessed 10 March 2009
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surrounding systems. Thus, there is no single appropriate scale or time frame for
management.
7) Humans as ecosystem components. Ecosystem management values the active role of
humans in achieving sustainable management goals.
8) Adaptability and accountability. Ecosystem management acknowledges that current
knowledge and paradigms of ecosystem function are provisional, incomplete, isolated
and subject to change. Management approaches must be viewed as hypotheses to be
tested by research and monitoring programs.
Traditional management versus current management
When undertaking integrated coastal management, or ecosystem-based management, it is
important to acknowledge and understand the cultural and social complexities in order to
be able to develop good relationships with communities all with multiple interests, to
ensure that it has on-going support. The cultural and social environment within many Pacific
Islands for example is complex, involving formal and informal institutions - linking legislated
responsibilities, traditional customs such as leadership and land ownership, and also a
complex ‘web of relations’ embedded in the society (Desai and Potter 2006: 290) involving
extended family ties, church ties and other community structures.
A recent ‘Lessons Learnt’ document from the International Waters group on Pacific projects
noted that attempts should be made to ‘ensure that external initiatives to be flexible
enough and allow enough time to enable them to adapt to the different cultures and
institutions of the Pacific’ (Aitaro et al. 2006: 5). Rather than imposing ways of doing things
on communities, organisations need to understand how communities operate and work
with them, and what the set of rules, or institutions are prior to any project
implementation.
These rules, either formal or informal have particular relevance when looking at
environmental issues. The ADB (2004: 14) notes that cultural norms through informal
institutions such as traditional knowledge and practices have ‘enduring and major relevance
for environmental protection in the Pacific’. In many Small Island States, however,
traditional practices remain a dominant force where it is the local landowners who have
responsibility for the land with little or no authority or enforcement from government.
Therefore to be able to implement ecosystem-based management, an organisation needs to
understand the cultural background and ownership issues before determining who has the
authority in the community to (1) make rules about the use, management and conservation
of resources (2) who implements the rules that are created and (3) who resolves disputes
that arise during the interpretation and application of rules (Agrawal and Gibson 1999: 638).
Without a clear understanding of this cultural context and who has the authority for
decisions, organisations struggle to gain acceptance and succeed in the Cook Islands
environment.
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Section Two: Ecosystem Goods and Services
What is ecosystem goods and services
Nature’s services, often called ecosystem services, are the benefits humans derive from
nature. They are a subset of ecosystem processes that directly or indirectly support and
improve human wellbeing.
Healthy ecosystems and their biodiversity carry out a diverse array of processes that provide
both direct and indirect "goods and services" that contribute to both economic prosperity
and to human welfare. For example there are the goods that are taken directly from an
ecosystem, such as timber or fish, and there are the indirect benefits such as water quality
and prevention of soil erosion.
‘Ecosystem services’ is the term given to the goods and services provided by natural and
modified ecosystems that benefit, sustain and support the well-being of people (Straton &
Whitten: 2009). Here, goods refer to items given monetary value in the marketplace,
whereas the services from ecosystems are valued, but are rarely bought or sold.
Ecosystem services include production of food and medicines, regulation of climate and
disease, provision of productive soils and clean water, and landscape opportunities for
recreation and spiritual benefits. These services come from ecosystems made up of a
combination of soil, animals, plants, water and air. The variety of these elements will differ
across ecosystems, from undisturbed natural areas to highly modified agricultural
landscapes. But all functional ecosystems include these essential components, which can be
seen as the ‘natural capital’ or underlying assets that give rise to a ‘flow’ of ecosystem
services (Straton & Whitten: 2009).
The Importance of ecosystem services
Despite the importance of natural ecosystems, we know almost nothing about how services
are produced, who benefits from them, and how we should value them. This lack of
information about ecosystem functions, and the difficulty in putting a direct economic cost
to indirect benefits means that ecosystem goods and services tend to be undervalued. If
these assets are depleted, the ability or capacity of ecosystems to provide services is also,
therefore, diminished. Ecosystem services underpin our well-being, including the production
of most other living needs, and so are of significant value.
This value has been recognised by the United Nations. In 2000, the then Secretary-General,
Kofi Annan, called for an assessment of the consequences of changes in the ‘health’ of
ecosystems on human well-being. The resulting ‘Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’ (MA)
was based on an understanding of the critical relationships between ecosystem services and
the constituents of wellbeing, including security, basic material for a good life (e.g food),
health and good social relations. The MA appraised ecosystems and ecosystem services
across the world, developing knowledge of their current condition, trends, and options for
restoring or maintaining ecosystems (Straton & Whitten: 2009).
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Increasingly, human activities are putting strain on the natural functions of natural
resources, and the ability of these resources to continue to provide the vast array of goods
and services to the human population is becoming increasingly under threat.
Sustainable services versus sustainable development
How much is a coral reef, clean beach or pristine rainforest worth? Putting a value on
ecosystem services is more than an analytical exercise. Figures help us assign non-zero
values to services we clearly desire, but we also need to understand how numerical values
are derived, as they can give a misleading impression of precision, and hide assumptions
that are too simplistic or require further scrutiny.
Herein lies the connection between ecosystem services and sustainable development: for
anything to be ‘sustainable’, there is some quality or quantity that must be sustained
through time. When it comes to sustainable development, what must be sustained is the
potential for generations to meet their needs. Ecosystem services, as the key functions that
underpin the potential for well-being, are thus integral to discussions of sustainable
development.
Economic Value
Assessing the sustainability of a new policy or development requires that we consider the
full set of impacts on people and resources: economic, environmental and social. One
major challenge we face, however, is that ecosystem services often go unrecognised in
economic markets, government policies and land management practices. This is because
most of these services are difficult to see and measure, and so their contribution to
economic and social wellbeing is rarely considered when management decisions are made.
Some good progress is now being made in these necessary assessments and ways of
‘accounting in’ natural capital. Research is continuing on how to create markets for
ecosystem services that may be able to help regulate resource use impacts on ecosystems.
Economic costs and benefits can be readily estimated through existing market prices.
Impacts that are of an environmental or social nature, however, often do not have a market,
making it harder to assess the value of different policy or resource management options.
One way of quantifying these ‘nonmarket’ impacts for the purposes of decision-making is to
estimate the dollar value associated with a gain or loss in community welfare as a result of
the impact. This is known as non-market valuation. Three important principles underpin
this non-market valuation approach.
First, we should only focus on the estimated change to asset value – known as the margin –
as a result of the policy or development being implemented. Second, the aim of valuation is
to identify the benefit or damage to individuals through estimating ‘willingness to pay’ or
‘willingness to accept’. Finally, individual values are added together to deliver a community
or societal value which assumes the benefit of an additional dollar to each individual is the
same (Straton & Whitten: 2009).
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Following this comes the challenging question of how to assess the value of ecosystem
goods or services when they don’t have an identifiable market. There are two main
approaches used in this form of ecosystem valuation:
 Revealed preference techniques, where value is revealed through a directly related
market from which individuals’ values can be inferred; and
 Stated preference techniques, where value is stated, usually by respondents of a
questionnaire or by attendees at a focus group.
Examples of revealed preference techniques are the travel cost and hedonic (pleasure)
pricing approaches. The travel cost approach, often used to infer the value of the recreation
area or activity, is based on the costs of travel incurred when people undertake a certain
activity such as a diving trip on a marine park. Hedonic pricing seeks to estimate a
relationship between the quality and quantity of the environmental good and the price of a
marketed good, such as the amenity value of a scenic view.
Both techniques require an appropriate ‘proxy measure’ which is often not available for
environmental goods. A number of related cost-based techniques – such as avoided cost
(the cost incurred in the absence of the service) – are also available, but these focus on the
costs rather than the benefits, which are likely to be quite different.
Stated preference techniques can be used to estimate a wide range of values. These
techniques almost always rely on using a hypothetical question in a questionnaire format
that asks people to behave as if they were faced with a market choice. This raises many
issues and much effort has helped reduce, but not remove, criticisms.
The main examples are contingent valuation and choice modelling. Contingent valuation
asks people how much they are willing to pay for one option over another. Choice modelling
asks people to choose their preferred option from a range, each of which comes at a
different cost and provides different environmental quality or quantity levels. When nonmarket valuation methods are used, it is important to identify which environmental impacts
the non-market value estimate represents and which it does not.
Marine Ecosystems as goods and services
Marine and coral reef ecosystems, including mangroves and seagrasses, are vulnerable
environmental resources that provide significant economic goods and services and
contribute to the livelihoods, food security and safety of millions of people around the
world. By accounting for coastal marine and coral reef ecosystem values in management
decisions, we can sustain their flow of goods and services in the interest of current and
future generations (Conservation International: 2008).
Marine ecosystems bring many benefits through:
 Tourism: People the world over visit coral reefs to enjoy the recreational
opportunities that these ecosystems provide, including SCUBA diving, snorkeling, and
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glass-bottom-boat viewing.
 Fisheries: Coral reefs and their surrounding ecosystems, including mangroves and
seagrass beds, provide important fish habitat.
 Coastal protection: Coral reefs serve as natural barriers to storm surges that can
cause great destruction to coastlines and communities.
 Biodiversity: Coral reefs as among the most biologically rich ecosystems on earth,
with about 4,000 species of fish and 800 species of reef-building corals described to
date.
 Carbon sequestration: Coral reefs remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and
are thus important for the mitigation of global warming.
Marine Ecosystem Values
A Conservation International (2008) study found that by one estimate, the total net benefit
per year of the world’s coral reefs is $29.8 billion. Tourism and recreation account for $9.6
billion of this amount, coastal protection for $9.0 billion, fisheries for $5.7 billion, and
biodiversity for $5.5 billion (Cesar, Burke and Pet-Soede, 2003).
A 2006 meta-analysis of wetlands valuation studies around the world found that the
average annual value is just over $2,800 per hectare (Brander, Florax and Vermaat, 2006).
A 2007 study found that the total value of ecosystem services and products provided by the
world’s coastal ecosystems, including natural (terrestrial and aquatic) and humantransformed ecosystems, added up to $25,783 billion per year (Martinez et al., 2007).
Tourism and Recreation
By one account, tourism and recreation account for $9.6 billion of the total $29.8 billion
global net benefit of coral reefs (Cesar, Burke and Pet-Soede, 2003).
In 2007, a study estimated that the average global value of coral reef recreation is $184 per
visit, in 2000 prices (Brander, Van Beukering and Cesar, 2007).
Fisheries
By one estimate, fisheries account for $5.7 billion of the total $29.8 billion global net benefit
of coral reefs per year (Cesar, Burke and Pet-Soede, 2003).
In the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the market value of seafood from mangroves has
been put at $7,500 to $167,500/km2/year (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005 cited in
UNEP-WCMC, 2006).
In 1997, annual commercial fish harvests from mangroves were valued $6,200 per km2 in
the United States to $60,000 per km2 in Indonesia (Bann, 1997).
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Coastal Protection
By one estimate, coastal protection accounts for $9.0 billion of the total $29.8 billion global
net benefit of coral reefs (Cesar, Burke and Pet- Soede, 2003).
Biodiversity
By one estimate, biodiversity value accounts for $5.5 billion of the total $29.8 billion annual
global net benefit of coral reefs (Cesar, Burke and Pet-Soede, 2003).
Degradation or Loss of Ecosystem Services
This section presents values for the costs of degradation or loss of ecosystem services. The
global costs of coral bleaching are calculated to range from $20.0 billion (a moderate
bleaching scenario) to over $84.0 billion (a severe bleaching scenario) in Net Present Value
(over a 50-year time horizon with a 3% discount rate). The tourism cost is highest with $10.0
billion to nearly $40.0 billion losses, followed by fisheries ($7.0 billion to $23.0 billion) and
biodiversity ($6.0 billion to $22.0 billion) (Cesar, Burke and Pet-Soede, 2003).
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United Nations (1993). Agenda 21: Earth Summit - The United Nations Programme of
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Lawrence, D.R, Kenchington, R.A, and Woodley, S.J.(2002) The Great Barrier Reef: Finding
the Right Balance. Melbourne University Press. Melbourne, Australia
United Nations (1993). Agenda 21: Earth Summit - The United Nations Programme of Action
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By Anna Straton and Stuart Whitten (http://www.sciencealert.com.au/features/2009160419021.html accessed 2 July 2009)
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