The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center's video: Ocean Planning Socio-Ecological Benefits Relevant to Sustainable Ocean Ecosystem Use

Presented by Dr. Rachel Zuercher Abstract: Over the past two decades, there has been a sustained increase in the development and number of marine spatial plans. Managers and governments have embraced the approach as a way to maintain ecological integrity of marine environments while ensuring continued provisioning of economic, social, and cultural benefits. However, there is limited empirical evidence that plans and associated management measures have effectively achieved stated goals. To address this information gap, we performed an assessment of existing marine spatial plans to better understand the current landscape of planning goals, objectives, and indicators. We then convened a team of experts to develop an evaluative framework, based both on site-specific objectives and global, overarching goals of ocean planning. Our framework is designed to assess progress toward social, ecological, and economic objectives in the context of enabling conditions (critical factors related to planning and ongoing governance processes) and externalities (unexpected events that influence progress toward a goal). It allows for data-driven assessment of plan objectives, identification of conditions under which progress toward goals has been made, and examination of site-specific context. And importantly, it accommodates a diversity of data types and disciplinary priorities. As governments and practitioners continue the development and implementation of marine spatial plans, and as opportunities for adaptive management arise, an understanding of outcomes is essential. Our framework and synthesis of existing plans represent a new and concrete step forward in the difficult task of evaluation, and provide information and tools for scientists and practitioners working to understand ocean planning outcomes. Bio: Dr. Rachel Zuercher is a Postdoctoral Fellow at SESYNC doing research on social-ecological connections in coastal and marine ecosystems. She is passionate about work that furthers our ability to manage coasts and fisheries sustainably for people, ecosystems, and non-human species. In addition to the work she will discuss in this seminar, her ongoing research focuses on flexibility in the management and operation of small-scale fisheries in California and the development of predictive models of fishing and fish biomass to inform ocean planning. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department.