Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Further collaboration between existing management and reporting systems that utilize eco-
system based planning and which could be viewed as adopting the ecosystem approach
is required to bring together experience and learning, such that the broader philosophy of
utilizing the approach can spread. The ecosystem approach is not owned by any particu-
lar sector or management or policy structure, albeit both the CBD and the FAO have set
a strong and complementary policy framework for its use. It is in implementation that the
issue of competing objectives must be faced. In this regard it is in fact mostly non-CBD
management systems that have begun the task of implementing the ecosystem approach.
Like indigenous approaches across the span of human existence, it is a process of adaptive
management and practice, and the passing on of the wisdom of those elements that works.
For a better future for ocean management and governance it is to be hoped that the prin-
ciples and practice of the ecosystem approach will be implemented more widely.
