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Implementing ecosystem‐based management: evolution or revolution?
Author(s) -
Berkes Fikret
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
fish and fisheries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.747
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1467-2979
pISSN - 1467-2960
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-2979.2011.00452.x
Subject(s) - corporate governance , scope (computer science) , toolbox , adaptive management , fisheries management , ecosystem based management , holistic management , business , complex adaptive system , ecosystem management , knowledge management , complexity management , sustainability , psychological resilience , environmental resource management , ecosystem , computer science , process management , political science , ecology , economics , marketing , psychology , artificial intelligence , fishing , finance , law , psychotherapist , biology , programming language
As a dominant paradigm, ecosystem‐based fisheries have to come to terms with uncertainty and complexity, an interdisciplinary visioning of management objectives, and putting humans back into the ecosystem. The goal of this article is to suggest that implementing ecosystem‐based management (EBM) has to be ‘revolutionary’ in the sense of going beyond conventional practices. It would require the use of multiple disciplines and multiple objectives, dealing with technically unresolvable management problems of complex adaptive systems and expanding scope from management to governance. Developing the governance toolbox would require expanding into new kinds of interaction unforeseen by the mid‐twentieth‐century fathers of fishery science – governance that may involve cooperative, multilevel management, partnerships, social learning and knowledge co‐production. In addition to incorporating relatively well‐known resilience, adaptive management and co‐management approaches, taking EBM to the next stage may include some of the following: conceptualizing EBM as a ‘wicked problem’; conceptualizing fisheries as social‐ecological systems; picking and choosing from an assortment of new governance approaches; and finding creative ways to handle complexity.