Publisher : Springer, Dordrecht
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2009
Thematic : Coastal Biodiversity
Language : English
Note
All major coastal ecosystems in the tropics are being degraded. The problems include losses of biodiversity, reduced ecosystem functions, and costs to coastal human societies. Declines in species’ abundances, and habitat loss and modification are the result of the demands for aquaculture, port construction, trawling, excessive nutrient loads, overfishing and collecting, sedimentation from catchment activities, invasive species, and climate change. A global response to these changes has been conservation and management approaches that aim to reduce, reverse, and prevent unnatural changes and address their underlying causes. Successes in conservation and management are likely when actions are designed to achieve the fundamental ecological goals of ensuring resilience, maintaining ecosystem connectivity, protecting water quality, conserving species-at-risk, conserving representative samples of species and assemblages, and managing at the appropriate spatial scale. Achieving societal aspirations for coastal ecosystems requires that management approaches address the socio-economic aspects of issues and include stakeholder consultation, participation, and education. Achieving long-term success in conservation and management requires coastal nations to address fundamental issues such as lack of information for management decision-making, population growth and poverty, limited technical and management capacity, poor governance, lack of stakeholder participation, the mismatches between the issue and the geographic scale of management, lack of an ecosystem perspective, ineffective governance and management, and a lack of awareness of the effects of human activities.
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Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
