Paper discussion by Digna Rivera CIAM 6117

Dr. Loretta Roberson

An Index to assess the health and benefits of the global

ocean

Authors

Affiliation • 1 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, 735 State St Suite 300, Santa Barbara, California 93101, USA.

• 2 Center for Marine Assessment and Planning, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.

• 3 COMPASS, Oregon State University, Department of Zoology, Corvallis, Oregon 97331-2914, USA.

• 4 Conservation Biology Division, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration, 2725 Montlake Boulevard East, Seattle, Washington 98112, USA.

• 5 Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive, Arlington, Virginia 22202, USA.

• 6 Sea Around Us Project, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Colombia V6T 1Z4, Canada.

• 7 Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.

• 8 Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.

• 9 Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.

• 10 Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, AmericanMuseumof Natural History,NewYork,NewYork 10024, USA.

• 11 Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA.

• 12 Center for Ocean Solutions and Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Monterey, California 93940, USA.

• 13 College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St Petersburg, Florida 33705, USA.

• 14 Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole,

Massachusetts 02543, USA.

• 15 Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California

93106, USA.

• 16 IUCN Global Species Programme/Conservation International, Biodiversity Assessment Unit, 2011 Crystal Drive,

Arlington, Virginia 22202, USA.

• 17 Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02453, USA.

• 18 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology & Center for Environmental Studies, Box 1943, Brown University,

Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA.

• 19 COMPASS, University of Washington, School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.

• 20 Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA.

• 21 New England Aquarium, Central Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts 02110, USA.

• 22 Department of Geography, Rutgers University, 54 Joyce Kilmer Drive, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA.

Human activities vs ocean benefits • Overfishing

• Coastal development

• Pollution

• Extracting of food

• Visiting coastal areas

• Making a living

• Continuing centuries-old tradition

Justification for the index • Need for new analytical approaches to guide how to balance

multiple competing and potentially conflicting public goals • Connect human development with the ocean’s capacity to sustain

progress. • US National Ocean Policy and EU(European Union) Maritime

Strategy emphasize using comprehensive ecosystem-based management to address the needs of both humans and nature

• Most ecosystem assessments focus solely on negative impacts of human on nature.

• Few synthetic measures exist to assess clearly and quantitatively the health of coupled ocean systems.

• Without a framework to define and guide the measurement of ocean health, policy and management will resort to assessments that are less transparent, more subjective and that lack standardization.

Construction of the Index • Objective: Develop and implement a systematic

approach for measuring overall condition of marine ecosystems that treats nature and people as integrated parts of a healthy system.

• Final product: standardized, quantitative, transparent and scalable measure that can be used by scientists, managers, policy makers and the public to better understand, track and communicate ecosystem status and design strategic actions to improve overall ocean health

• Focus on global and 171 exclusive economic zones(EEZ)

Exclusive economic zone(EEZ) • The exclusive economic zone is a strip of sea of 200

miles wide along all coasts of the country. In this area the country has exclusive right to exploit living resources and minerals, but does not have full sovereignty as it is in the territorial sea. The country has the duty to protect marine species.

• The Convention of the sea of 1982 convened by the United Nations in order to establish rules on the exploitation of marine resources, internationally recognized the exclusive economic zone for all countries.

http://www.mardechile.cl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=31

Six mayor challenges • Identify a modest number of widely accepted

goals to assess ocean health and benefits at any scale

• Develop models that measure, with reasonable accuracy, how well each goal is achieved

• Define robust reference points for each model • Incorporate sustainability into the index • Ensure that the index is responsive to real

differences and changes in ocean health and benefits

• Allow flexibility to adapt to constraint(or future improvements) of data availability, quality and quantity

Conceptual framework for calculating the index

1 2 3 4

5 6 7

8

9 10

State of the global ocean

Map of index and individual goal scores per country

Index score and individual goal for area

Differences between developing and developed countries

• Developed countries- higher scores, related to Human Development Index(independent measure of development staus). – Stronger economies

– Better regulations

– Infraestructure to manage pressures

– Greater capacity to pursue sustainable resource use

– Exceptions: Poland(42) and Singapore(48)

• Developing countries- Low score – Exceptions Suriname(69) y Seychelles(73)

Seychelles Islands Suriname Jarvis Island

Key points affect the interpretation of index scores

• Results for individual goals may seem counterintuitive – Example: Russia scored low in food provision, natural products and

tourism, and high for clean waters and biodiversity (total score 67) – Example: United States and United Kingdom scored 63 and 62,

respectively, but the scores arose from very different individual goal scores.

• Include goals that tend to be more highly valued by preservationists and non-extractive users

-- Example: Jarvis Island(86) with 8 goals not applicable and Germany(73) with 8 goals performed well

• The people value ocean benefits differently, the preservationist

perspective produced the highest index score – Example: Romania, Russia, French Guiana, Micronesia and Denmark,

changing weights created important differences, altering index scores by up to 27

• Function models currently do not exist for most goals

Global index score with goals weighted unequally based on four different potential value sets

Distribution of scores across countries for the index and each goal

Exploring the index • Tourism and recreation proved difficult to model given

limited data, scores are artificially low. • Biodiversity scores may seem surprisingly high, but this

result accurately reflects that relatively few known marine species risk extinction.

• Comparing individual goals scores provides guidance for improving overall ocean health, both globally and nationally – Coastal habitat loss carbon storage, coastal protection and

biodiversity – Restoration activities affects many goals – Protection of coastal areas and species sense of place,

biodiversity and likelihood – Efforts to promote coastal livelihoods, environmentally

sensitive urbanization of the coastal zone and improved sanitation infrastructure coastal livelihoods and economies, tourism and recreation and clean water

Box and whisker plots for status, likely future state, pressures, resilience and trend for country level score for each goal and sub goal

Sustainability into the future • Mariculture and Lasting special places broadly

improving

• Species is declining

• To measure resilience they relied on best available global measures, such as Worldwide Governance Indicators, that rarely incorporated information on the implementation or effectiveness of regulations, both key elements of good governance

• Long term trend (> 10 years)

Relation between index and population

Humans undoubtedly have substantial negative impacts on the ocean, and index scores are negatively

correlated with coastal human population and cumulative impact within each region

Discussion • Index:

– Provide robust, widely applicable tool for ongoing assessment of ocean health with respect to well-accepted societal goals and a key benchmark against which to compare future progress and inform comprehensive ocean policy

– Assesses rather than models current and future conditions, and so it cannot predict the future.

– Can be used to simulate the consequences of a range of potential actions, providing a powerful tool to inform decisions about how to use or protect ocean ecosystems.

– Can stimulate better measurements and more focused management

Cont. Discussion • GlobType equation here.al-scale analyses are useful

for global comparisons but tend to be locally imprecise

• Assumptions and compromises – Limited the index to 10 constituent goals

– Gaps existed in many data sets • Example: International arrivals data- tourism and recreation

– Domestic tourism?

• Example: No global data for illegal fishing, habitat loss rate and point sources pollution

– Key knowledge gaps remain, particulary regarding reference points • Example: Marinculture, production data available, but

sustainability indicators incomplete

• Don’t provide appropriate levels for any given location

Index relevance • Provides guidance on many potential avenues for improving ocean

health that cut across multiple goals • Provides a mechanism for decision makers to evaluate and prioritize

actions relative to particular goals given an awareness of potential trade-offs

• Indicate that better enforcement of marine protected areas or water quality laws would result in higher resilience scores, lower pressure scores, and ultimately improved status for multiple goals

• Investing in better data collection and reporting to allow more accurate calculation of the index would provide a mechanism for adaptive management, where individuals and institutions learn from their experiences to make more informed decisions

• Allows clear and rapid communication of vast quantities of information.

• Creates an important opportunity to transform the dialogue on how we manage our interactions with the ocean

• Is an important tool for decision making from local to international levels

Methods summary

Index score is the sum of 10 goals specific index score

I = α𝑖. 𝐼𝑖𝑁𝑖=1

α𝑖 = 1

Ii = (𝑥𝑖 + 𝑥𝑖 , 𝐹) / 2

Likely future status

𝑥𝑖 , 𝐹= (1 +𝛿)−1⦋1 + βTi + (1-β)(ri- pi)] 𝑥𝑖

Present Future Status Status

discount rate

weighting term

recent trend resilence

pressures

Ecological pressures: pollution, habitat destruction, species introduction, fishing and climate change Social pressures: poverty, political instability and corruption Resilence: International treaties and ecological resilience

Referencias • Fundación Mar de Chile. (2005). Zona

economica exclusiva. Recuperado de http://www.mardechile.cl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=31

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