Ecosystem-Based Management

The world’s ecosystems provide goods and services, without which life on earth would cease to exist. The marine environment provides food, regulates the earth’s climate system and assimilates pollutants. The goods and services humans derive from the planet’s marine ecosystems are estimated to total $21 trillion annually.

Human activities have the power to change ecosystems drastically.

Ecosystem change affects whales, salmon, seabirds and all other marine life in the ocean.

Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is a term used to describe a balanced way of managing resources while taking the surrounding ecosystem into account. There is no one definition of EBM, but this early definition has stood the test of time and is widely quoted:

"…ecosystem management is integrating scientific knowledge of ecological relationships within a complex sociopolitical and values framework toward the general goal of protecting native ecosystem integrity over the long term." (Grumbine, 1999)