Including Humans: Placing People in Marine Ecosystem–Based Management

Marine ecosystem-based management (EBM) is presented by its theorists as an “integrated approach that considers the entire ecosystem, including humans”. There is recognition by a wide diversity of biodiversity conservation actors that social sciences must inform conservation practice. However, there is little agreement on what this would mean. Drawing on over 100 interviews of experts involved in implementing marine EBM in Mexico, California, and the Western Pacific, this paper examines the role that social science plays in these projects. It argues that the framing of problems and solutions in these projects limit the types of social science that are deemed relevant to understanding human-nature relationships largely to the role of communication. In so doing, this framing excludes what individuals in these projects identify as the barriers to doing conservation which mainly lie in institutional, political and cultural dimensions. It then suggests how social science can contribute to understanding these factors.