The Ecosystem Approach to Aquaculture and SpatialPlanning

Paul Tett,Laurence Mee Centre for Society & the Sea,

Scottish Association for Marine Science

December 21, 2017

Abstract

The aims of the Aquaspace project (2015-2018) were “to provide increased space ofhigh water quality for aquaculture by adopt-ing the Ecosystem Approach to Aquacul-ture, and Marine Spatial Planning”. One ofits outputs was a set of materials compris-ing a notion Masters-level course in ‘Plan-ning and Managing the Use of Space forAquaculture’. This lecture is part of theintroduction to this course, and describesthe Ecosystem Approach, its application toAquaculture, and the theoretical frameworkneeded to understand the use of spatial plan-ning to overcome economic conflicts be-tween sectors and resolve social conflictsbetween developers and citizens, whilst en-suring activities take place sustainably andwithout harm to marine ecosystem struc-ture and function (or services and biodiver-sity).

This document may be cited as: Tett, P.(2017) The Ecosystem Approach to Aquacul-ture and Spatial Planning. LMC Working Pa-per, 24 pp. SAMS, Oban, Scotland.

Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Model 2

3 Ecosystem Approach 3

4 Implementation 7

5 Regional implementations 8

6 EAF & EAA 9

7 Spatial Planning 11

8 Adaptive Management 11

9 GIS and other tools 13

10 Institutions, Organisations, Tools 13

11 Where next 14

A Definitions 15

B Ecosystem 17

C Ecosystem services 20

D LO & SAQ 21

1

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1 Introduction

Suppose that you are working for an aquacul-tural enterprise and that you have been askedto find a site for a new farm. You know whatsort of conditions your animals (or seaweeds)will need, and you know what kind of operationwill be economic. So you set about looking fora place with suitable conditions where the farmcan operate at a profit. But now you encounterdifficulties: many suitable sites in coastal seasare already taken by other operators or usedfor other purposes. And that’s not all . . .

Suppose (instead) that you have worked allyour life in an industrial city, and at last re-alise your dream of retiring to a coastal com-munity. Your new house has wonderful sea-views. And then one day you discover that adeveloper wants to install a fish-farm, or a largeexpanse of mussel ropes, right in the middle ofthese views, and right where you moor yourlittle sailing boat. And so . . .

Suppose that you are a scallop,1 feeding hap-pily on the sea-bed. Suddenly a shadow fallsacross you and stuff (perhaps literally, sh*t)starts raining down. And so . . .

Suppose that you are working for an agencyof government that licences developments inthe sea. Turning on the computer one morn-ing you find angry emails from: a developer,who can’t understand why she can’t get a li-cence; a citizen, who is upset by the threat tohis sea-view; and someone in a nature protec-tion charity, writing on behalf of the scallop.What do you do?

Well, you refer to the framework of law andregulation that, hopefully, protects both theenvironment and citizens’ rights without ob-structing economic growth. Is there anythingbehind such legality? In this lecture I wantto consider, not specific laws (except as ex-amples), but an internationally agreed frame-

1 Unlikely, but see Callon (1986).

work for thinking about and managing inter-actions between people and nature. This isthe Ecosystem Approach (EA). I will de-scribe the EA and the way its principles canbe cascaded down (figure 1) to the operationallevel in order to deal with the sort of conflictssketched above. It will be necessary to use con-cepts from the social as well as the natural sci-ences.

2 Model

Figure 1 shows the conceptual model used inthis lecture. Terms introduced here and in thetext are defined in Appendix A, and italicisedwhen they first appear. The Figure shows theflow of a steering medium from the high-levelobjectives of the Ecosystem Approach, to theoperational use of its associated principles inmanaging interactions between society and na-ture. These interactions are labelled as ecosys-tem services providing benefits to people in so-ciety, and Pressures on ecosystems from soci-ety. The distinction between ‘society’ and ‘na-ture’ has been contested (Latour, 1993, 2004),and the two parts might be better seen as awhole, i.e. as a social-ecological system (SES)(Berkes et al., 1998). A ‘steering medium’ isbest understood in the present context as aflow of information and instructions, resourcesand constraints.

SES are spatio-temporally bounded enti-ties. What lies outside them is their envi-ronment, which provides their boundary condi-tions. SES exist on various scales, with socio-economic institutions as well as ecosystemsin larger SES providing the environment forsmaller SES nested within them. Governance,including the management of SES, is simi-larly multi-tiered, from the highest (‘constitu-tional’) level through intermediate (‘collective-choice’) level to the lowest, ‘operational’ level(Ostrom, 2005; Tett and Sandberg, 2011). The

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High-level principles,Such as the EA

High-level principles,Such as the EA

ImplementationsSectoral (EAA) Regional

ImplementationsSectoral (EAA) Regional

Tools(AM, MSP,

CBA, GIS, etc)

Actors

Actions

Ecosystems:`nature'

Society

services pressures

benefits

monitoring

Figure 1: Conceptual model for the oper-ational implementation of principles such asthose of the EA. The Ecosystem Approach toAquaculture is a sectoral implementation, andMarine Spatial Planning (MSP) is a tool. AMrefers to ‘Adaptive Management’, made semi-explicit here by the feedback loop involvingmonitoring.

EA is a product of the highest level.Installing a fish-farm, developing an acqu-

cultural industry, or modifying regulations, arechanges in an SES that might be described interms of action situations (Ostrom, 2007, 2009;McGinnis and Ostrom, 2014) or transforma-tions (O’Brien, 2012). In their actions, the ac-tors are influenced by their world-views andaided and constrained by the tools available,the norms of the institutions to which theysubscribe, and the organisations of which theyare a part. Finally, figure 1 shows a feedbackloop involving the monitoring of ecosystems;this might be seen as either Adaptive Manage-ment or in terms of DPSIR (Luiten, 1999) orDPSWR (Cooper, 2013) frameworks for man-aging human effects on nature.

3 Ecosystem Approach

The ‘Ecosystem Approach’ – or EA – is defined(SCBD, 2004, p.6) as

“a strategy for the integrated man-agement of land, water and living re-sources that promotes conservationand sustainable use in an equitableway. . . . It recognizes that humans,with their cultural diversity, are anintegral component of many ecosys-tems.”

It is part of the Convention on Biological Di-versity (CBD) of 1992, an international agree-ment with the key objective given in its article1 of

“the conservation of biological diver-sity, the sustainable use of its compo-nents and the fair and equitable shar-ing of the benefits arising out of theutilization of genetic resources ...”

The CBD contributed to the sustainable de-velopment goals of Agenda 21 of the UN Con-

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ference on Environment and Development (theRio ‘Earth Summit’ held in June 1992), andupdated in 2015 as ‘The 2030 Agenda for Sus-tainable Development’ (UN General Assembly,2015).

Opened for signature at Rio, the CBD cameinto force in December 1993, and is reviewedfrom time to time by Conference of the Par-ties (COP).2 The EA was identified as “theprimary framework for action under the Con-vention” at the second COP in 1995. In Jan-uary 1998, a workshop of senior scientists inLilongwe in Malawi drew up a list of 12 princi-ples of the EA, providing a short rationale foreach (Anonymous, 1998). They agreed thatthe EA “can be considered as a framework foranalysis and implementation of the objectivesof the CBD”.

The Malawi principles were accepted at the5th COP in 2000. During the next few yearsthey received some minor but significant up-dates, and the associated rationale was ex-panded (SCBD, 2004). The principles arelisted in Tables 1 and 2. A few obvious thingsstand out:

• the vision of nature as composed ofecosystems . . .

• which need good management to enablethem to sustainably deliver services to so-ciety;

• the need to ensure fair access to theseservices by decentralisation, consultingstakeholders, and drawing on sources ofknowledge additional to those of (ecolog-ical) science;

• the recognition that the limitations ofcurrent knowledge require precaution andadaptive management;

and perhaps one not so obvious:

2 CBD website, www.cbd.int

• the apparent tension between the conser-vation of biodiversity and the sustainableuse of ecosystem services.

There are other, largely similar, prescrip-tions for remedying humanity’s unsustainableuse of the Earth’s resources. One of theseis Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM), de-fined for marine systems by Katsanevakis et al.(2011) as:

“an environmental management ap-proach that recognizes the full ar-ray of interactions within a ma-rine ecosystem, including humans,rather than considering single issues,species, or ecosystem services in iso-lation . . . [and that aims to] main-tain marine ecosystems in a healthy,productive and resilient condition sothat they can sustain human uses ofthe ocean and provide the goods andservices humans want and need”

Katsenevakis et al. present EBM as an over-arching frame of reference, formalised at inter-national level through, for example, the CBD’sEcosystem Approach principles, or the FAOcode of conduct for fisheries. Waylen et al.(2014) argue that the key issue is not the nameof the approach or method but whether it fullyembraces all the Malawi principles, includingthe ‘social’ EA01, EA02, EA11 and EA12. Iam with Waylen et al., in that I think the EAis about SES sustainability and hence that itssocial aspects are as important as its ecologicalaspects.

Finally, are the EA principles simply instru-mental, that is, sets of empirically-validatedguidelines to help rational managers achievegoals set at higher levels of governance? Ordo the principles form an ethical system, pro-viding a set of norms and high-level goals thatare to be evaluated “under the aspect of right-ness” (Habermas, 1984) and which influence

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Table 1: Principles 1-6 of the Ecosystem Approach. These are, mainly, the ‘Malawiprinciples’ of 1998, as listed in Annex 1 of Garcia et al. (2003), with my italics used to identifykey terms. Text in square brackets summarizes significant additions adopted by Conferencesup to and including COP 7 in 2004 (SCBD, 2004). No further changes noted on CBD website(https://www.cbd.int/ecosystem/principles.shtml ) when visited in August 2017. SCBD (2004)is also the source of the italicised texts in the ‘Comments’ column. Plain text in this columnused to paraphrase material in SCBD (2004) or supply additional comments (source given).

Principle Comment1 The objectives of management of land,

water and living resources are a matter ofsocietal choice

. . . and should be determined through negotia-tions and trade-offs among stakeholders hav-ing different perceptions, interests and inten-tions.

2 Management should be decentralised tothe lowest appropriate level

Decisions should be made by those who repre-sent the appropriate communities of interest,while management should be undertaken bythose with the capacity to implement the de-cisions. See Ostrom (2007, 2009) concerningresearch into circumstances in which decen-tralisation leads to better decision-making.

3 Ecosystem managers should consider theeffects [actual or potential] of their activ-ities on adjacent and other ecosystems

for example, natural resource managers, de-cision makers and politicians should considerthe possible effects that their actions couldhave on adjacent and downstream ecosystems(river basins and coastal zones) . . .

4 Recognizing potential gains from man-agement there is a need to understandthe ecosystem in an economic context,considering e.g. mitigating market dis-tortions, aligning incentives to promote[biodiversity conservation and] sustainableuse, and internalizing costs and benefits.

. . . market distortions . . . undervalue natu-ral systems and populations . . . most environ-mental goods and services have the character-istics of “public goods” . . . which are difficultto incorporate into markets. “Internalizing”means (a) properly valuing ecosystem ser-vices and if necessary paying for their mainte-nance, and (b) properly costing damages duepollution and charging these to their produc-ers. (Author)

5 A key feature [“priority target”] of theecosystem approach includes conservationof ecosystem structure and functioning [ inorder to maintain ecosystem services ].

Biodiversity conservation and the mainte-nance of human wellbeing depend on thefunctioning and resilience of natural ecosys-tems. ‘Well-being’ results from a supply ofecosystem services and their conversion into‘benefits’ to societies (Turner and Schaafsma,2014).

6 Ecosystems must be managed within thelimits of their functioning

Our current understanding is insufficient toallow these limits to be precisely defined, andtherefore a precautionary approach coupledwith adaptive management, is advised.

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Table 2: Principles 7-11 of the Ecosystem Approach.

Principle Comment7 The ecosystem approach should be under-

taken at appropriate spatial and temporalscales

[Monitoring and ] management processes andinstitutions should be designed to match thescales of the aspects of the ecosystems beingmanaged.

8 Recognizing the varying temporal scalesand lag-effects that characterise ecosystemprocesses, objectives for ecosystem man-agement should be set for the long term

. . . because it is the long-term, spatially ex-tensive processes that both characterize anddetermine the broad ecosystem properties. . . .[which, however] conflicts with the tendencyof humans to favour short-term gains and im-mediate benefits over future ones.

9 Management must recognize that changeis inevitable

Ecosystem components vary because of in-ternal and imposed dynamics, and variabilitymay be necessary for proper ecosystem func-tioning. Therefore, utilize adaptive manage-ment . . . be cautious in making any decisionsthat may foreclose options . . . consider mit-igating actions to cope with [e.g.] climatechange.

10 The ecosystem approach should seek theappropriate balance between conservationand use of biological diversity.

Biological diversity is critical both for its in-trinsic value and because of the key role itplays in providing . . . ecosystem . . . services.Don’t manage [its] components either as pro-tected or non-protected. [Instead] shift tomore flexible measures, where . . . measures[are] applied in a continuum from strictly pro-tected to human-made ecosystems.

11 The ecosystem approach should considerall forms of relevant information, includ-ing scientific and indigenous and localknowledge, innovations and practices

Doing this might lead to epistemologicalconflicts but is in the interests both of eq-uity and a better understanding of rele-vant ecosystems

12 The ecosystem approach should involve allrelevant sectors of society and scientificdisciplines

Many challenges encountered in the EAare complex, ‘wicked’ (Jentoft and Chuen-pagdee, 2009) problems needing multi-level, multi-sector solutions.

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actors, especially those at the operational levelof governance, because they represent virtueas well as as because they are, in some cases,implemented through Law?

As discussed in Appendices B and C, theapparently objective concepts of biodiversity,ecosystem, and services, prove to be debat-able human constructs. Thus it seems to mebest to consider the EA as (a) one of severalframeworks within which to understand rela-tionships between society and nature, and (b)a set of internationally-agreed norms to in-form and guide actors who find themselves op-erationally managing particular relationships.But it will take some work to convert these gen-eralities into effective action ‘on the ground’.

4 Implementation

How, then, can principles agreed at a workshopin Malawi be used to understand and manageSES issues relating to a salmon-farm in a Scot-tish sea-loch or a mussel-farm in the ItalianAdriatic? How can they protect scallops orhelp the retiree to reach an agreement with afish-farmer about the former’s boat mooring?

Typically, the road from “high-level goals”to “operational objectives” is seen (Kat-sanevakis et al., 2011) as starting from interna-tional policies and objectives, such as those ofthe UN and CBD, wending its way throughmultinational regional objectives such thoseas of Directives of the European Union, andreaching its terminus in national and subna-tional regulations and regulatory agencies.

However, EA04 that suggests that the mar-ket might have a part to play in operational-ising the EA principles, and EA05 introducesthe idea of ecosystem services as things of mon-etary values. In addition, the influence ofthe EA has diffused from working ecologistsinto the political conservation community andthrough teaching into the next generation of

ecologists and into society at large. In the lat-ter, a rational and utilitarian understandingof nature as a system has intermingled withunderstandings from other worldviews such asthose in the recent papal encyclical Laudato Si’(Francis, 2015).

eco-system

goods &services

civil society

governance

market

satisfactionof humanwell-being

regul-ation

collectivearrange-ments

HUMANACTIVITY

PRESSURE

STATE

sustainability efficiency equitynatural capital financial capital social capital & institutions

socio-economicsystem

Figure 2: Three methods for the distribu-tion of ecosystem services amongst society.From Tett and Sandberg (2011).

Thus, it may be useful to understand thatthere is not one road but several by which suchcascading can take place. They can be catego-rized as follows, depending on the dominantsteering medium and its relationship to thethree main methods (Figure 2) by which thebenefits arising from ecosystem services can bedistributed though society:

hierarchical: power-steered; including, indemocratic societies, the governancestructures legitimised (Habermas, 1996)by elected executives and legislatures orthe trans-national agreements into whichthese have entered; the common featureis that the operational actors are con-strained in what they can do by rulesor directions from higher levels of gover-nance; labelled as regulation in Figure 2;

market: money steered; assuming a societyconsisting of rational, well-informed ac-tors aiming to optimise the satisfaction

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of their well-being needs, or the require-ments of their organisations, by freelybuying and selling in a well-ordered mar-ket;

diffusive and deliberative: called collec-tive arrangements in Figure 2 and in-volving actions by citizens responding tothe principles of the EA or by public of-ficials informed by them; i.e. steered byideas that can be deliberated as validityclaims: actors receive information in vari-ous non-constraining ways, evaluate it ac-cording to criteria provided by their ownworld-views, and implement it throughcommunicative action (Habermas, 1984).

In many cases, the routes and the steeringare mixed. Governments may need to inter-vene to maintain a ‘well-ordered market’ in-cluding ensuring that externalities are properlycosted in to economic activities, where thesemake use of what are deemed to be ‘publicgoods’ such as the capacity of the environmentto absorb waste. Or they may help to ensuretrust in a product, for example by ensuringthat marketable shellfish are tested for toxins.Scientists researching environmental impact orsocial licence need to be funded - perhaps bygovernment, or perhaps by industry - and yetmight also be motivated by their training asecologists or sociologists, or by ethical beliefs.Finally, an issue that will need untangling con-cerns the legislative and operational roles thatmay properly be played by individual actorsand those which are the legitimate functionsof institutions.

These matters will be illustrated and ex-plored in more detail by Aquaspace’s resultsfrom its Case Studies, which will feature inother lectures. Given this, I will now returnto the hierarchical route. The CBD guidelines(SCBD, 2004, Annex II) give implementationoptions for the first step in the cascade:

“One is the incorporation of theprinciples into the design and im-plementation of national biodiversitystrategies and action plans and re-gional strategies. Others includeincorporation of the ecosystem ap-proach principles into policy instru-ments, mainstreaming in planningprocesses, and sectoral plans (e.g.,in forest, fisheries, agriculture).”

The emphases are mine, to highlight the topicsof the next two sections.

5 Regional implementa-

tions

‘Regions’ refer to specific parts of the world,and regional strategies are those made byagreement amongst a group of nation-stateswith a common interest, in the present case, inecosystems in the part of the world ocean thatbathes their shores and the maritime commu-nities that use the services from those ecosys-tems. Here are examples of regional implemen-tations:

• in northern Europe, two regionalmulti-national bodies, the HELCOMConvention, for the Baltic Sea Area,and the OSPAR Convention for theNorth East Atlantic, agreed (HEL-COM/OSPAR, 2003), a joint “ecosystemapproach to managing human activitiesimpacting on the marine environment”in the two sets of waters for which theywere responsible.

• the Marine Strategy Framework Directive(MSFD) of the European Union, requiresthe application of “an ecosystem-basedapproach to the management of humanactivities while enabling a sustainable useof marine goods and services”.

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A nation-state entering into an agreement,such as the OSPAR Convention or the 2007Lisbon Treaty that reformed the EuropeanUnion, accepts certain obligations. In the caseof OSPAR these include monitoring and re-porting duties in pursuit of common strate-gies to reduce anthropogenic Pressures. In thecase of the EU, they extend to the transposi-tion of Union Directives into member state law.Thus the ‘governance road’ runs through the‘collective-choice’ level (national legislaturesand executives), to the operational level, whereofficials are charged with tasks such as moni-toring or licensing developments within the na-tional version of the regional framework.

6 Sectoral implementa-

tions: the EAF and

the EAA

Sectoral implementations relate to particularindustries. Relevant here are the applicationsof the EA pioneered by the Food and Agricul-ture Organisation (FAO) of the UN to fisheriesand aquaculture: the Ecosystem Approach toFisheries (Garcia et al., 2003) and the Ecosys-tem Approach to Aquaculture (EAA) (Sotoet al., 2008).

It will be useful to understand the term ‘sec-tor’ in two ways. First, as a technologically de-fined collective mode of exploiting ecosystemservices, and, second, as a use of the sea thathas human spokespersons to argue for the pri-ority of that usage in competition with thatof other sectors. The latter is the definitionadopted in Table 3, and provides part of thebasis for understanding conflicting stakeholderdemands. In order to serve the latter purposethe Table extends beyond the usual categoriesof the old and ‘new Blue’ maritime economiesinto a third category, because there are human

organisations that ‘speak for’ these additionalsectors.

Table 3: Competing maritime sectors: eachhas human spokespersons who argue for prior-ity or sole use of certain spaces for their sec-tor; explicit conflict in physical space is, for-tunately, rare in European seas, but use ofecosystem services by one sector can depletethose needed by others.

OLDMARITIMEECONOMY

Capture fisheries,Oil/Gas extraction,Transport, Pipes &cables

NEW BLUEECONOMY

Aquaculture; MarineRenewable Energy; Min-eral extraction; Novelbiochemicals; Tourismincluding Leisure andRecreational Fishing)

NATURE &SOCIETY

Biodiversity, EcosystemOrganisation, CulturalServices, Education &Research

Aquaculture has been seen as a way of re-placing both the protein supply from, and thejobs provided by, fisheries, as discussed in thefirst lecture. Fishing, which is the capture offree-living marine organisms, and aquaculture,which is the cultivation of some of these or-ganisms, are clearly different types of humanactivity. They have different traditions, so-cial and commercial organisations, and legalframeworks. They make different use of ecosys-tem services: fisheries exploits the ‘provision-ing service’ provided by the upper trophic lev-els of food webs, whereas aquaculture requiresthe benefit (from regulating services) called

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‘assimilative capacity’ (see appendix C) to ab-sorb its wastes and in some cases the provision-ing service of the lower trophic levels to providefood for shellfish.

It should of course be kept in mind thatthe words ‘fisheries’ and ‘aquaculture’ point toconstructs or concepts that are heterogenousand complex. Fisheries includes: large scale,industrialised capture of huge biomasses of fishin a globalised activity; small-scale, ‘artisanal’,inshore fisheries that can be more responsive tolocal stakeholders in ecosystem services; andfishing for recreation or to help family pro-visioning. Marine aquaculture includes: therearing of fish in floating cages or in tanks withpumped seawater; the cultivation of shellfishand seaweeds; and mixed cultivation, or ‘In-tegrated MultiTrophic Aquaculture’. In manycases, providing the feed for cultivated fish re-quires outputs from capture fisheries.

Aguilar-Manjarrez et al. (2017, p.4) trans-late the EA principles into three imperatives,requiring aquaculture to:

i. “be developed in the context of ecosystemfunctions and services (including biodiver-sity) with no degradation of these beyondtheir resilience” (EA03,05,06,10);

ii. “improve human well-being with equity forall relevant stakeholders (e.g. access rightsand fair share of income)” (EA01,04);

iii. “be developed in the context of other sec-tors, policies and goals, as appropriate”(EA12).

(I have added the EA principles).The first of these imperatives requires eco-

logical understanding and environmental pro-tection; the second, sociological understandingand societal involvement; and the third, un-derstanding in terms of industrial economicsand government policy-setting. These require-ments are shown in terms of economic, envi-ronmental and social licences in figure 3.

farmenterprise

economiclicence

technicaldevelopment

environ-mentallicence

sociallicence

governance

civilsociety

other industrial sectors

MSFDWFD

(MS)P

SLO

Figure 3: Three notional licences requiredfor successful operation of a farm or indus-try in an EU member state. The environ-mental licence often corresponds to a permitto discharge a certain amount of waste intothe ecosystem, under constraints arising fromUnion Directives such as the Marine StrategyFramework Directive (MSFD) and the WaterFramework Directive (WFD) The economic li-cence corresponds to a business plan agreedwith a source of financial capital. The sociallicence is shown with two components: one for-mal as a result of a (marine spatial or other)planning process ((MS)P) and the other an in-formal ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO).

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7 Spatial Planning

Each imperative has a spatial aspect. Someparts of the sea are better than others for fish-farming, for example, given requirements forgood water circulation to provide oxygen andremove waste. Others might be better for shell-fish farming, supporting a rich phytoplanktonto provide food for filter-feeders. The prof-itability of a fish-farm depends on, amongstother things, the time and fuel costs in servic-ing the site from an on-shore base. And thesocial acceptability of a site might depend, inpart, inversely on its visibility.

If the sea were otherwise unused, finding thebest place to site a farm would be an issue thatan aquacultural developer would solve as partof a business case. However, there are otheractivities, with competing claims. Thus theneed for Marine Spatial Planning (MSP),defined (Ehler, 2014) as

“a public process of analyzing andallocating the spatial and temporaldistribution of human activities inmarine areas to achieve ecological,social and economic objectives thatare usually specified through a polit-ical process.”

The three objectives correspond to the threesorts of licence in figure 3.

Aguilar-Manjarrez et al. (2017) links theEAA to “spatial planning and management”,arguing that “the benefits ... are numerous andinclude higher productivity and returns for in-vestors, and more mitigation of environmental,economic and social risks”. They set out fourmain aspects for national implementations ofEAA-SP, summarised in table 4.

The matters listed in the table might seemto be technical issues, matters that if success-fully resolved by experts and planners, can leadto socio-economic optimisation. However, I

started this lecture with some examples of per-sonal disagreements, and these probably can-not be resolved by solely technical measures -by the use of tools as discussed below. Devis-ing a planning process that can handle boththe technical optimisation and the conflictingwishes of citizens, is challenging.

The definition of MSP includes a ‘politi-cal process’ to define objectives. In moderndemocracies this is understood as the electionof a representative government to make lawsand decisions. In addition, stakeholders mightbe consulted over policy details and involvedin operational decisions. In recent years it hasbegun to be recognized that this is insufficient:that gaining local social consent to an activitysuch as aquaculture needs both co-productionof knowledge about the impact of the activity,and deliberation about its local management.

8 Adaptive Management

Adaptive Management (AM) is recommendedby the CBD (SCBD, 2004, Annex I) in theirguidance for applying the EA. It is defined byEhler (2014) as

“the incorporation of a formal learn-ing process into management ac-tions . . . [i.e.] the integrationof planning, implementation, moni-toring and evaluation to provide aframework to systematically test as-sumptions, promote learning, andprovide timely information for man-agement decisions” .

Thus, the final part of the conceptual modelfor EAA-SP in figure 1 is the feedback loopfrom ‘actions’ through ‘monitoring’.

The CBD guidance draws on EA06, whichrefers to lack of knowledge of the limits ofecosystem functioning, and therefore advises

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Table 4: Spatial Planning & Management components for aquaculture, based on frame-work of Aguilar-Manjarrez et al. (2017), and with ‘Owners’ (those controlling a process) ex-emplified from Aquaspace’s Scottish case study. SG = Scottish Government (executive); SP =Scottish parliament (legislature). The UK devolves almost all aquaculturally-relevant powersto this administration. LG = (Scottish) Local (or County) government. RMMP = RegionalMarine Planning Partnerships. EPA = Environment protection agencies (SG non-departmentalpublic bodies): Scottish Environment Protection Agency (issues discharge licences) and Scot-tish Natural Heritage (implements Habitats Directive and oversees MPA - Marine ProtectedAreas). Note the emphasis in this case on governmental ownership, and hence power steering.The RMMP of the Scottish marine planning framework, required by the EU Maritime SpatialPlanning Framework Directive, are still being set up, and (as of 2017) aquaculture planningrelies mainly on LG.

Component Scale Description of component Owners (Scotland)Nationalscoping

nationalpart ofa MSFD‘subre-gionalsea’

Review species and technologies, stake-holders, legal framework; develop poli-cies and maps

Governance: SP,SG + EPA

Zoning B,C;water-body

Identify areas suitable for aquacul-ture; estimate their carrying capac-ity; strategic environmental assess-ment; implement land use and marinespatial planning and issue maps

Governance: SG +EPA, LG, RMPP

Site selec-tion

A & B Environmental Impact Assessment;avoiding MPAs; planning consentsand discharge (environmental effect)consents; separation distances fromother farms and activities; sea-bedlease arrangements; acquiring sociallicence

Developer; Gover-nance: LG, EPA

Manage-ment areas

B, water-body

Define management area and purpose(e.g. disease control); agree manage-ment plan and enforcement measures

Farmer collectives;Governance: SG +EPA

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a precautionary approach to protect the en-vironment. However, strict application of the‘precautionary principle’ would retard aqua-cultural expansion; the use of adaptive man-agement allows developments to proceed, be-cause it provides a means by which excessiveimpacts can be detected and corrected. Ap-plied to a single farm, AM requires the defini-tion of local Environmental or Ecological Qual-ity Objectives (EQO) and the implementationof a monitoring program for ecosystem Stateto determine if the EQOs are met.

Any application of AM to spatial planningimplies that the allocation of marine spacemust be a dynamic and ongoing process, ratherthan a once-and-for-all disposal of a site orarea. It implies that the use of marine ecosys-tem services should be something that can beacquired for a defined period on a lease, ratherthan property that is permanently alienatedfrom the public domain. Furthermore, it im-plies that the planning process itself should bethe subject of regular reflection, and modifica-tion if required. But this could lead to diffi-culties: an adaptively managed environmentallicence could necessitate scaling back of a siteor industry, or even a change in regulations,whereas organisations developing a site or in-dustry need a stable regulatory framework inorder to raise financial capital for long-term in-vestment. These are complicated matters thatdo not seem to have been fully worked throughin relation to aquaculture.

.

9 GIS and other tools

Spatial planning obviously needs a map to in-form and record decisions about use. Geo-graphic Information Systems (GIS) are soft-ware that improves the efficiency of a mappingprocess that may need to go through many it-erations if is part of a public discussion. Maps

created and maintained by GIS consist of anumber of layers: for example, a base layerrepresenting marine and coastal topography,overlain by other layers mapping existing orproposed sectoral activity.

Used in this way, GIS is a tool, somethingthat aids actors in achieving spatial planningobjectives. Other tools serving these objectivesinclude: Cost-Benefit Analysis, which can beused by developers as well as planners to iden-tify optimum sites for a farm or an industry;methods that aim to elicit the value that cit-izens place on a seascape without fish-farms;and numerical models that can simulate theeffects of farms on the environment.

The Aquaspace project has appraised anddeveloped software and procedural tools tosupport the implementation of the EAA, es-pecially in spatial planning (Table 5). Otherlectures will provide the knowledge needed toselect and use these tools. A final issue for dis-cussion here, however, concerns the essentialcharacter of the EAA-SP process and what thissays about the tools to be used.

10 Institutions, Organi-

sations, Tools

Much of what the sea can provide, as ecosys-tem services, lies in ‘common-pool resources’,which are public goods at risk of runawayexploitation (Hardin, 1968; Ostrom, 2009).In her Nobel memorial prize lecture Ostrom(2009) considered the sustainable use of theseresources and concluded that

“humans have a more complex mo-tivational structure and more capa-bility to solve social dilemmas thanposited in earlier rational-choice the-ory. . . . a core goal of public pol-icy should [therefore] be to designinstitutions that bring out the best

EAA-SP 14

Table 5: Some tools developed*, appraisedand/or used during Aquaspace (Galparsoroet al., 2017).

Category ToolSite identifica-tion

Aquaspace tool*,AkaVis

Modelling FARM, Disease Con-nectivity analysis

Mapping GIS, SISAQUAStakeholder Consultation, Public

Comment AnalysisInvestor Aquaculture Invest-

ment Index*, Water*Organisms META*

in humans. We need to ask howdiverse polycentric institutions helpor hinder the innovativeness, adapt-ing, trustworthiness, levels of co-operation of participants, and theachievement of more effective, equi-table and sustainable outcomes atmultiple scales . . . ”

What is meant by an institution is a set ofrules, perhaps formally encoded in a regulatoryframework (the hierarchical route) or embed-ded in local norms. EA principles can be partof these frameworks or norms, but in order toimpact on the physical world of the natural en-vironment they must act on human behaviour,typically that of those in the economic sectorslisted in table 3. Mediating such action areemployees or members of organisations such asthe environmental protection agencies of gov-ernment or nature-protection charities. An or-ganisation may be steered by institutions butit is embodied in the physical world throughpeople and tools.

A tool is something without agency usedpurposively by actors. A tool might be hard-ware (such as a spade or a fish-cage) or elec-tronic software (numerical models or mappingapplications). But it might also be an institu-tion: both the EAA and MSP are sets of rulesand procedures that constrain and enable ac-tors’ behaviour.

Clearly, there are complex interactions be-tween actors, organisations and institutionsthat need to be properly understood - or care-fully crafted, following Ostrom (2009) - in op-erational applications such as the EAA. Oneof my reasons for looking at the EA cascadein theoretical terms is to provide a basis bothfor understanding the complexities, and forseeing spatial planning as a part of the pro-cess by which society and its members debatethe maintenance of their SES rather than asa merely technological matter to be addressedsolely by public officials.

11 Where next

This lecture has raised many issues for explo-ration in subsequent parts of the course, whichwill include specific local details from Aquas-pace case studies3 and the detailed knowledgeneeded to understand the tools presented inthe Aquaspace toolbox that is linked to thiscourse. Before moving on to these, I suggestyou (the reader) tries to sum up, in your ownmind, the main points made in this lecture, andtry to answer the Self-Assessment Questions inappendix D.

3 Aquaculture is an activity that uses fresh aswell as salt waters. For simplicity in this lectureI have referred mainly to marine matters. Nev-ertheless, the principles discussed here apply alsoto freshwater aquaculture, and one of the lecturesdeals with issues relating to freshwater aquaculture,drawing on Aquaspace’s case study in Hungary.

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Appendices

A Definitions

This appendix provides definitions of key so-cial and ecological terms used in the lecture,adapted to the present context.

action situation (Ostrom, 2007; McGinnisand Ostrom, 2014) : a focused social ac-tivity in which actors interact commu-nicatively to preserve or change a part ofa SES : see also Habermas (1984, startingp.279) concerning categories of action;

actor : an embodied person with conscious-ness, communicating in society, and withagency and world-view

Adaptive Management (AM) is “the incor-poration of a formal learning process intomanagement actions” Ehler (2014)

agency is the power of (conscious) choiceamongst possible actions

boundary conditions refer to the asymmet-rical effects of a system’s environment:they exert an influence on the system,while the effect of the system on its en-vironment is typically considered negligi-ble; this is a convenience for numericalmodelling but may neglect important ag-gregate impacts on the common environ-ment of a group of systems; as example,sunshine and the global economy provideboundary conditions for a SES

benefits are what satisfy human well-beingneeds

biodiversity or Biological diversity “meansthe variability among living organismsfrom all sources including, inter alia, ter-restrial, marine and other aquatic ecosys-tems and the ecological complexes of

which they are part: this includes diver-sity within species, between species andof ecosystems” (CBD 1992, article 2)

communicative action: social action ori-ented to reaching understanding amongstactors (Habermas, 1984).

co-production of knowledge means, opera-tionally, the working together of stake-holders and technical experts to agree aconceptual model of an issue relevant toAM or MSP; Jasanoff (2004) wrote, moregenerally, that “co-production is short-hand for the proposition that the ways inwhich we know and represent the world(both nature and society) are inseparablefrom the ways in which we choose to livein it. ... Scientific knowledge, in particu-lar, is not a transcendent mirror of reality.It both embeds, and is embedded in, so-cial practice”

deliberation is equated here with a formalsocial process involving communicativeaction

DPSIR, DPSWR: the “chain of linkagesbetween the driving forces within society(D), the pressure on the environment (P),the state of the environment itself (S), theimpact on people and nature (I) and thedesirable response (R)” (Luiten, 1999); inthe alternative acronym, W refers to im-pact of environmental changes on humanwelfare (Cooper, 2013).

ecosystem: a “system composed ofphysical-chemical-biological processesactive within a space-time unit of anymagnitude, i.e. the biotic communityplus its abiotic environment” (Lindeman,1942); see appendix B.

ecosystem services: ‘exports’ from ecosys-tems to human economies that bring ben-

EAA-SP 16

efits to the people in these economies(Turner and Schaafsma, 2014); see ap-pendix C.

environment: that which lies outside a sys-tem: for example, the natural environ-ment, which lies outside the human do-main, and the abiotic environment ofbiota in an ecosystem

governance is “the steering and ruling of so-ciety and the ways in which citizens andgroups articulate their interests, mediatetheir differences, and exercise their legalrights and obligations” (Tett et al., 2011b)

institution: “a set of rules and procedures,both formal and informal, that struc-ture social interaction by constraining andenabling actors’ behaviour” Tett et al.(2011b) and are, typically, maintainedor adapted by this behaviour; alterna-tively, an autopoıetic information process-ing subsystem within society (Luhmann,1989)

MSP is Marine Spatial Planning: in generalthe “public process of analyzing and al-locating the spatial and temporal distri-bution of human activities in marine ar-eas to achieve ecological, social and eco-nomic objectives” (Ehler, 2014); specifi-cally, the national processes within EUmember states consequent on the MSPFD

nature: ontologically, the (physical) envi-ronment for society ; epistemologically,the part of a world-view that characteriseswhat is not social

norms: society-specific expectations thatguide human behaviour

organisation: an embodied institution,those of interest here providing interfacesbetween the social world (of information)

and the physical world of the naturalenvironment; the relevant embodiment istypically in people and physical tools

Pressures: the processes by which HumanActivities affect ecosystem State; see DP-SIR

sector: a collective mode, technologically de-fined, of human use of ecosystem services

Social-Ecological System (SES): “linkedsystems of people and nature” (Berkeset al., 1998); “human-environmentsystems” (Ostrom, 2007); “a spatio-temporally bounded site of interactionwithin and between biophysical pro-cesses and information communicationprocesses” (Billing et al., 2017)

society: ontologically, a non-corporeal sys-tem reproduced by communication, madeup of institutions, and providing an en-vironment for actors and organisations;epistemologically, what is not nature

stakeholder: a person who, or organisationthat, has a legitimate claim to be be heardin relation to an action situation

steering medium: a term used by Haber-mas (1984, 1987) to describe the imper-sonal operation of money or power in con-trolling the functioning of a society; usedhere to include any flow of guiding in-formation that is understood as mean-ingful by Actors or Institutions, includ-ing instructions, prohibitions and socialresources; may be generalised to includeflows of energy or limiting elements (e.g.N or P) through ecosystems

system: “a set of elements standing in in-terrelation among themselves and withthe environment” (von Bertalanffy, 1972);

EAA-SP 17

complex systems have emergent proper-ties that cannot be localised in any ele-ment

tool: a mechanical or informational struc-ture use purposively by actors to bringabout a change in the social or physicalworlds; in the present context, “any legalinstrument (laws, regulations, guidelines),process (such as stakeholder engagement),computer model application (such as GIS,or computer models to assess impacts ofaquaculture), or other approaches thatcan be used or be implemented to helpand support the development of aquacul-ture; and the gathering, analysis and pre-sentation of data to aid decision making”(Galparsoro et al., 2017)

validity claim: an intersubjectively mean-ingful communication that can be chal-lenged and defended on grounds of right-ness (i.e. by appealing to norms) or truth(i.e. by citing reports of phenomena); seeHabermas (1984)

welfare, well-being: that which rationalpersons aim to maximise for themselvesand their families, and which it is the pur-pose of an economy to maximise in aggre-gate

world-view: a person’s model or account ofthe world: how it is, how it came to be,how to behave in it, and what counts asvalid knowledge (Aerts et al., 2007)

B Ecosystem

The concept of ecosystem, which lies at theheart of the EA, is complex, as the definitionsin Table 6 indicate. The concept must be dis-tinguished from the thing or things that it pur-ports to describe or explain.

Consider Figure 4. This diagram, drawn bythe marine biologist Alistair Hardy in 1924,shows what is now called a ‘food web’, and hasbeen highly influential in how successive gen-erations of marine biologists have understoodmarine pelagic ecosystems.

Figure 4: The relation of the herring to theplankton community. This drawing by Hardy(1924) has inspired the idea of marine ecosys-tems as ‘food-webs’. The organisms in the bot-tom row are members of the phytoplankton;above them are zooplankters.

What the diagram shows is a network ofinterconnected boxes, each one representing akind of plant or animal plankton. Of course,the sea is not full of boxes; instead it containsa myriad of small animals, each seeking to eat,or avoid being eaten, by each other. By exam-ining the stomach contents of many herring,and many larger plankters, Hardy was able toobserve the results of these feeding encounters:his diagram aggregates his observations overeach type of organisms and so leads to a de-duction of the main feeding pathways in thesea. His diagram is one way to ‘see’ (with themind’s eye) a marine ecosystem. That is tosay, it is a ‘construct’, a way of imposing orderon observations. Problems can arise when the

EAA-SP 18

Table 6: Definitions of ecosystem and some related terms. Emphases added.

“[T]he ecosystem . . . is a particular category among the physical systems thatmake up the universe. In an ecosystem the organisms and the inorganic fac-tors alike are components which are in relatively stable dynamic equilibrium.”(Tansley, 1935)

original

“The ecosystem may be formally defined as the system composed of physical-chemical-biological processes active within a space-time unit of any magnitude,i.e. the biotic community plus its abiotic environment” (Lindeman, 1942)

best

“Any unit that includes all of the organisms (i.e. the “community”) in a givenarea interacting with the physical environment so that a flow of energy leadsto clearly defined trophic structure, biotic diversity, and material cycles (i.e.exchange of materials between living and nonliving parts) within the systemis an ecological system or ecosystem.” (Odum, 1971)

textbook

“Ecosystem means a dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organismcommunities and their non-living environment interacting as a functionalunit” (CBD article 2).

CBD itself

“An ecosystem can be defined at the most basic level as a natural unit ofliving things (animals, plants and micro-organisms) and their physical envi-ronment. The living and non-living elements function together as an interde-pendent system” (Anonymous, 2007)

simplified

Ecosystem performance and health can be characterized by three terms.“The vigor of a[n eco]system is simply a measure of its activity, metabolism orprimary productivity. . . . The organization of a system refers to the numberand diversity of interactions between the components of the system. . . . Theresilience of a system refers to its ability to maintain its structure and patternof behavior in the presence of stress. (Costanza and Mageau, 1999)

health

EAA-SP 19

construct is interpreted uncritically in terms ofexpected ecosystem behaviour.

For example, many ecologists (and I am one)interpret the set of interactions amongst organ-isms, and with their environment, as compris-ing a system as defined by General SystemsTheory (von Bertalanffy, 1972), i.e.

“a set of elements standing in inter-relation among themselves and withtheir environment.”

Ecosystems are seen by GST as complex sys-tems, that maintain their internal states dis-tinct from conditions in their external envi-ronment through (i) taking in resources (e.g.solar energy) from that environment and (ii)internal feedback loops. Although ecosystemsare not organisms - for one thing, they seldomhave obvious peripheries - their definition insystem terms is similar to that of Life. Indeed,it can be argued that Life on Earth began aswhat we would now call a biogeochemical sys-tem with some autopoıetic ability, developed agenetic basis, and later evolved distinct species(Woese, 1998). Some genes may have subse-quently become selfish, some species likewise,but on this argument it is ecosystems and notparticular species that we need to preserve, inparticular because of their capacity for self-maintainance (Moss, 2008).

From the systems perspective comes theconceptualisation of ecosystems in terms of (a)their structure or organisation and (b) theirvigour or function (Costanza and Mageau,1999). In metaphor, and drawing on diagramslike those in Figure 4, organization can beimagined as a network of pipes and vigour aswhat flows through the pipes. Resilience isheld to be an ‘emergent’ property of such anecosystem, dependent on a balance between or-ganisation and vigour. Overwhelming the re-silience of an ecosystem, by placing it undertoo much pressure from human activities such

as fishing or polluting, may result in a ‘regimeshift’ and loss of what the ecosystem formerlyprovided to humans.

Some ecologists don’t see ecosystems in thisway, but simply as a group of species with pop-ulations that cohabit because each is adaptedto a particular (resource) niche that is realisedin a given geographic area: see Davis and Slo-bodkin (2004) and response by Winterhalderet al. (2004).

Many ecologists hold that ecosystem func-tion depends on the diversity of species therein;loss of species is held to degrade function. Themetaphor of an airplane with riveted wings issometimes invoked: loosing one rivet wouldprobably have no effect, but loose some crit-ical number and the wings fall off. By anal-ogy, loss of a critical (but unknown) numberof species is supposed to lead to ecosystem col-lapse and loss of services. A contrasting view isthat ‘functional diversity’ is key: an ecosystemneeds functionally different types of organisms,to carry out - to take two examples - photo-synthesis and aerating soft sediments on thesea-bed. In many ecosystems, multiple speciescarry out the vital functions; this is useful (inproviding replacements if the dominant func-tional species is eliminated) but not necessary.See references in Tett et al. (2013).

The point is, then, that ecologists dis-agree about the characteristics of ecosystemsand the role of species within them: mattersthat a non-specialist might think were well-established truths about nature. It is interest-ing that what led to the creation of the CBDwere what might be called ethical concernsabout rates of species extinction and aboutthe ‘theft’ of genetic material from ecosystemsin developing nations: utilitarian arguments,based on the need to preserve ecosystem struc-ture and function in order to sustain the pro-vision of ecosystem services, seemed to havebeen added later.

EAA-SP 20

C Ecosystem services

Ecosystem Services are ‘exports’ from ecosys-tems to human economies that bring bene-fits to the people in these economies (Turnerand Schaafsma, 2014). If they are mate-rial things, the benefits are sometimes called‘goods’. What motivates people to convert ser-vices into benefits is the desire to satisfy well-being needs.

Take a simple case: ‘nature’ provides a stockof fish such as herring. This is the ecosys-tem service. Humans must catch, land, pro-cess, distribute and cook these fish before theyfinally become a benefit to human society -i.e. before they can be eaten to satisfy hungerand thus supply a well-being need. The catch-ing, etc, requires human action - usually called‘labour’ - plus the deployment of capital as-sets, such as ships, docks, processing plantsand kitchens, and the input of energy to fuelthe ships and fry the fish.

By analogy with human (physical, financialor intellectual) capital, nature can also be seenas a set of capitals - such as the stocks of her-ring - built up by, and involved in, natural pro-cesses. The modern idea of ecosystem servicesderives from Costanza et al. (1997), who esti-mated a cash value for the world’s ecosystems.These authors wanted to increase the weightgiven to the natural capitals and services in hu-man policy decisions, driven as these were bythe aim of economic growth. Earlier ideas aredescribed by Gomez-Baggethun et al. (2010).

A few years after the paper by Costanzaet al., the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment(MEA, 2005) used the idea of ecosystem ser-vices as a framework for evaluating the state ofthe planet. This introduced four categories ofservice: supporting, regulating, provisioning,and cultural. Turner and Schaafsma (2014) in-corporated these into a scheme (figure 5) thatdistinguished ‘intermediate services’ and ‘final

services’ from the structure and functioning ofthe ecosystem from which they were exported.

components (structure/organisation)

includingspecies and habitats

food web

processes (function/vigour)

including: productionflow through food websbiogeochemical cyces

Marine Ecosystems

Intermediate Services

Supportingincluding:

nutrient cyclingformation of habitats

Regulatingincluding:

waste breakdowncarbon sequestration

Final Ecosystem Services

Provisioning:coastal & marine biota

Regulatingincluding:

climate regulationclean water & sediments

Cultural:biodiversity, seascapes

Goods/Benefits

Cultural:ecotourism

education & researchcultural signifiers

Regulatingincluding: buffering

climate change;waste removal

Satisfaction of humanwell-being needs

Financial, physical & intellectual Capital

Figure 5: Ecosystem services classification:modified from figure 2.6 in Turner and Schaaf-sma (2014), showing how services flow throughthe system and are transformed into benefits.

Some intermediate services of particular in-terest to aquaculture are those of ‘primary pro-duction’ - providing food for cultivated shell-fish, for example - and ‘waste breakdown anddetoxification’. The latter contributes to the fi-nal service of ‘clean water and sediments’. Thebenefit of ‘assimilative capacity’ quantifies how

EAA-SP 21

much waste can be absorbed by an ecosystem(Tett et al., 2011a) without damaging otherbenefits to human society.

The category of ‘cultural services’, estab-lished by the MEA, allows aspects of ecosys-tems that do not result in a material good orbenefit, to be valued during economic assess-ment. Such services contribute to human wellbeing through benefits such as those of an at-tractive seascape, or the sight of charismaticanimals. To be clear: the ecosystem serviceis the biophysical condition; the benefit is theinformed perception of that condition.

D Learning Outcomes

and Self-Assessment

Questions

The learning outcomes for this unit are:

• familiarity with the Ecosystem Approachand the principles of its application toAquaculture

• familiarity with a theoretical frameworkfor the economic, environmental and so-cial aspects of spatial planning

• acquaintance with key theoretical con-cepts including ecosystem, ecosystem ser-vices, institution, tool

The SAQs that follow test your achievementof these learning outcomes and help you thinkactively about the points raised in this lecture.No answers are given.

1. Can you give an example of a conflict be-tween the conservation and use of biodi-versity, or between biodiversity protectionand the use of ecosystem services? WhatEA principles are relevant here?

2. A national government carries out astakeholder consultation on whether tocharge aquacultural sites for their use ofnatural assimilative capacity. What steer-ing media are involved?

3. Make a simplified drawing of an ecosys-tem as a network. Discuss the drawingwith someone with a different world-view:what would they wish to add or subtract?What EA principle is relevant?

4. Can you think of an example action sit-uation (relating to marine management)in which people act as tools of an insti-tution, and one in which an institution isthe tool?

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