New Needs and New Tools for Marine Management

Jorge Miguel Alberto de Miranda

2017

Abstract

Huge changes are taking place in the governance of the oceans. The implementation of the UNCLOS agreement is creating new rules in what concerns the national responsibility for large areas of the seafloor. Maritime transportation is continuously increasing as the most cost-effective solution for international trade, creating virtual ocean highways. Growing energy demands, and the need to decarbonize the economy are leading to the installation of large power systems close to the coasts, competing with the traditional uses of the ocean, like fisheries or leisure. During the XX Century marine management was mainly based on a project-by-project or permit-by permit approach (Douvere, 2008), with no explicit incorporation of the interplay between the different values in stake. Marine spatial planning (MSP) is emerging as a tool to support the implementation of an ecosystem approach to marine management, supporting ocean governance. It intends to provide legal certainty and predictability for the public and the private use of the ocean and help to quantify the consequences of alternative management strategies. The development of GIS-based MSP is growing fast but it is still strongly constrained by large gaps in baseline data, time and space heterogeneity between the different data sources, and the limitation of the physical, chemical and biological models to reflect natural processes. Economic and social constraints are also a major question in the decision process and its trade-off with the environmental values is dependent on political strategies. While we are not able to mathematically model the complexity of socio-environmental systems, management decisions cannot be reduced to algorithms to be applied by IT systems. Nevertheless, there is an increase role for spatially-explicit systems as the backbone of the marine management decision systems. The on-going international initiative to define significant Marine Protected Areas is the opportunity to put extra emphasis on the development of spatially explicit systems as the basic infrastructure for adaptive management and public participation.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

de Miranda J. (2017). New Needs and New Tools for Marine Management.In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM, ISBN 978-989-758-252-3, pages 7-9. DOI: 10.5220/0006805800010001

in Bibtex Style

@conference{gistam17,
author={Jorge Miguel Alberto de Miranda},
title={New Needs and New Tools for Marine Management},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM,},
year={2017},
pages={7-9},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006805800010001},
isbn={978-989-758-252-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management - Volume 1: GISTAM,
TI - New Needs and New Tools for Marine Management
SN - 978-989-758-252-3
AU - de Miranda J.
PY - 2017
SP - 7
EP - 9
DO - 10.5220/0006805800010001