Philippe Cury, IRD UMR EME CRH (Centre de Recherche Halieutique Méditerranéenne et Tropicale), Sète, France
Building scenarios for marine ecosystems under human-induced and natural forcing constitute a powerful approach to envision our future and to provide guidance for management action. By addressing ‘real-world’ questions regarding systems dynamics, policy choices, technological evolution, consumption and production patterns, scenarios can help us explore the response of marine ecosystems to global change, but also on how humankind will respond through changes in technology, economies, lifestyle and policy. Projections-like scenarios are built to extrapolate fundamental trends of climate change impacts (e.g., shifts in distribution, primary productivity, ocean acidification, economic benefits, food security). On the other hand, ‘pathway-like scenarios’ defined by international initiatives e.g., the Millennium Assessment and the Global Environment Outlook 4 initiatives are able to produce coherent, plausible stories that respond to a shared vision in a multidisciplinary context. A scientific strategy that couples projections-like scenarios with the pathway-like scenarios is required to promote an objective-oriented approach to ecosystem-based fisheries management. Such consilience-type approach to building marine ecosystem scenarios can substantially help to reach the ‘real world’ objectives such as rebuilding marine stocks to sustainable level by 2015, implementing 20% of marine protected areas by 2020.
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