Taskforce on Ocean Governance

Space & Ecosystem Based Management

Seas and oceans are confronted with a diversity of environmental and spatial problems caused by different conflicting maritime activities. Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) is presented as an integrated approach to management that considers entire ecosystems, including humans. However, EBM requires a detailed understanding not only of the ecosystem/environmental dynamics, but also of the ethical, social, economic and political processes. This cluster aims to bring together scholars and practitioners who investigate and are interested in the territorial and political challenges related to the implementation of EBM, in for example Marine Spatial Planning. MSP, and more general processes of regionalization, are about, on the one hand processes of spatial ordering and the organization of activities within a certain territorial spaces, and the contestation and (re)composition of political spaces (who should be given access to marine resources, who should benefit from them, who should have access to decision-making, etc.) on the other. Overlaps between EBM, SBM, and other ESG-Oceans clusters like Fisheries, Shipping, and Science, Risk, and Uncertainty are also of interest to members of this group.

If you’d like to join the cluster, please click here to become a member. This will allow you to post information on the page and give you the opportunity to receive information and updates via the Oceans Taskforce listserve.

While we do not have funding ourselves, we do hope to foster joint projects via Working Groups, which would bring together cluster members to write grant proposals, put together collected volumes/special issues, or develop webinars, workshops, syllabi, or similar products. All projects should focus on the cluster topic and fit within the ESG Science Plan (http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/research-agenda/). Working group members should come from more than one institution and should have sufficient expertise to accomplish project goals. Forming a working group can help you to expand your professional network. It will also provide mentoring from the cluster leaders and access to logistical support like web-conferencing from ESG headquarters. To submit a Working Group proposal, please fill out this form and send it to the cluster leader(s) listed below. If you’d like to propose a Working Group that fits in more than one cluster, please send it to the leaders of each cluster in a single e-mail. Scroll down for descriptions of active Working Groups.

Cluster Leader:

Jan Van Tatenhove
Wageningen University, Netherlands

 

Active Working Groups: