Promoting the Resilience of Marine Social-Ecological Systems to Global Change

How can we sustain future life in the oceans and provide seafood for our children and grandchildren to enjoy? The Anthropocene – the Earth System shaped by humanity - calls for a governance transformation with policies and practices that reconnect people to the biosphere. New forms of governance are developing that shift management from single species to a focus on whole seascapes and the ecosystem services that they generate. A global dynamics perspective, with climate change as a significant part, highlights the challenges of performing such transformations and case studies from Maine, USA, coastal areas of Chile, the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, and the Southern Ocean will be presented as examples. Based on the studies a pattern emerges illuminating the role of key actors, social networks, bridging organizations and diverse institutions that help prepare for marine governance transformations and use window of opportunities, whether environmental or political, to make it happen. The Nereus Predicting the Future Ocean Program will further the understanding how we can transform marine social-ecological systems and promote stewardship of seafood production, including aquaculture, that is adaptive to change and that builds social-ecological resilience.