Marine environmental risk assessment and management : putting into practice an ecosystem-based management approach

In addition to the complexities of marine ecosystems and the current state thereof, marine management is even more complex given the range of activities and legislation to manage them. Marine planning processes are considered as the means for an integrated management approach to address ecosystem concerns while promoting sustainable growth, development, and use. Although marine plans are mostly considered as an ecosystem-based approach to management and conservation, they seldom provide clarity as to how their objectives are to be achieved. In policymaking, administrations develop and implement standards, codes of practice or guidelines to "carry into effect" the policy objectives through regulatory and non-regulatory frameworks. In fact, environmental protection regulatory frameworks used to manage human activities and their pressures in the marine environment are such frameworks. The effectiveness of marine protected areas is shown to be dependent on the pressures generated outside the protected area even though activities within such areas are prohibited. In this thesis, I discuss the need to integrate environmental protection regulatory frameworks and conservation measures as a comprehensive environmental protection and conservation strategy for managing human activities at large while protecting vulnerable ecosystem structures, functions and processes. Given the need to understand the effectiveness these regulatory frameworks to achieve broader ecosystem and conservation objectives, I also propose the use of risk management standards and tools. These standards were developed to identify the management measures needed to achieve policy objectives in contrast to an assessment of impacts risks. In an ecosystem-based management context, these standards and tools assign a prevention role to environmental protection regulatory frameworks and a mitigation and recovery role to conservation measures.