Ecostystem-Based Management Vision Statement for Oregon

Maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem is vital to protect and restore the abundance and diversity of marine life as well as the productivity, diversity and resilience of Oregon’s coastal and ocean ecosystems. Management that prioritizes the protection, conservation and restoration of coastal and ocean ecosystems, rather than single species or single resources, is necessary to achieve the range of benefits and services a healthy marine ecosystem provides. By incorporating the principles of ecosystem-based management in the policies of all agencies affecting ocean resources, Oregon can restore and/or maintain the state’s marine ecosystem in a healthy, productive and resilient condition so it can provide the services humans want and need.

What is Ecosystem-based Management?
At its core, ecosystem-based management (EBM) requires the consideration of ecosystem principles in managing human activities affecting the ocean. EBM is an integrated approach to management that considers the entire ecosystem, including humans. EBM considers the cumulative impacts of different activities and it:
• Emphasizes the protection of ecosystem structure, functioning and key processes;
• Is place-based in focusing on a specific ecosystem and the range of activities affecting it;
• Explicitly accounts for the interconnectedness within systems, recognizing the importance of interactions between many target species, other non-target species and key services;
• Acknowledges interconnectedness among systems, such as between air, land and sea; and
• Integrates ecological, social, economic, and institutional perspectives, recognizing their strong interdependences.

What Ecosystem-Based Management Will Achieve

Oregonians derive significant benefits from the proper functioning of marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem processes. These benefits are frequently referred to as ecosystem services, and each ecosystem (e.g., estuaries, kelp forests, open ocean, river systems, forests, agricultural fields, grasslands) provides a complementary set of services. These services are produced by the interactions between the plants, animals, microbes and people interacting with one another and with the physical environment. Some of the benefits and services that intact and functional marine ecosystems provide for Oregonians include healthy seafood, clean beaches, stable fisheries, abundant wildlife and vibrant coastal communities.
The concept of managing for the delivery of multiple ecosystem services is a fundamental shift from present management practices. In Oregon, the tendency to focus management efforts toward those resources with established “market values” results in a bias that favors certain provisioning services (e.g., food, medicine and energy) over equally critical regulating (e.g., climate, floods, coastal erosion), cultural (e.g., recreational, spiritual, religious), and supporting (e.g., nutrient cycling, photosynthesis) services, which provide essential natural capital.
Moving From Concept to Practice
Ecosystem-based management in Oregon necessitates integration of management authorities that currently work largely in isolation. Sector-by-sector management often results in complicated tradeoffs between the needs of different sectors—such as the ongoing controversy over water diversion for agriculture that impacts the health and resilience of river ecosystems—without effective mechanisms to develop appropriate solutions. Due to the limited nature of their individual mandates and structures, agencies are often unable to realize holistic/comprehensive solutions that ensure a healthy ecosystem while providing for human use.
Moving forward with effective and successful ecosystem-based management in Oregon involves management decisions being made across traditional agency boundaries; prioritizing ecosystem-based principles in decision making; and establishing accountability for maintaining the health, productivity, and resilience of our coastal and marine ecosystems. While the underlying science provides an essential foundation, the crux of instituting EBM is determining how to best improve organizational structure and behavior (socially, legally, and politically) to account for interactions and resiliency with realistic, new policy and management approaches. This new approach requires the integration of ecosystem principles in managing human activities affecting the oceans. It requires that we regulate human activity in a manner that maintains long-term ecosystem sustainability, resilience, and services (including both consumptive and non-consumptive uses). This means that we must assess ecosystem needs through a range of key indicators before conducting activities such as coastal/ocean development, setting fishery harvest levels, or setting aside significant habitat areas for conservation.
An integrated governance system is designed to empower all appropriate agencies (individually and collectively) to consider ecosystem-based principles in making decisions affecting coastal and marine waters and the ocean environment. As is already the case, decisions should be made based on the best available scientific information and assessments, and also must include explicit consideration of important linkages among all ecosystem components, including humans, plants and wildlife, and the environments in which they live.

The role of uncertainty in EBM, given the complexity of ecosystems and the competitive, conflictual social process of prioritizing values, can be incorporated into decision-making processes, including through adoption of precautionary management and controls. In order to successfully reframe complex ocean policy, more than scientific knowledge must be considered. Knowledge of organizational structure and behavior as well as policy process are equally important. The implementation of sustainable ocean management strategies will require investing in scientific, political, legal, and community-based thought to develop new ocean management approaches.