Project Description
This is a shortened version taken from the project's Description of Work.
A two-sided factsheet on the project is available to download in PDF and you can also read more about the project structure.
The project description is divided into the following sections:
The KnowSeas Contribution above the Baseline
Application of the Systems Approach to Europe's Seas
Cumulative Pressures / State Changes and Marine Spatial Planning
Introduction to the Approach
Human society is not separate from the environment that surrounds it. Civilisations are dependent on, and part of, their ecosystems. The Ecosystem Approach to Management involves considering both social systems and the surrounding environment together, as parts of a whole.
Traditionally, social sciences (such as economics) and natural sciences (such as ecology) have been considered as separate disciplines, but the Ecosystem Approach demands that both are combined, in order to study the way we interact with our environment and to allow us to make informed decisions that optimise both environmental and social outcomes. Combining social and ecological science requires truly interdisciplinary collaboration in which social and natural scientists pursue common objectives, each contributing their specialist knowledge and perspectives to the research.
However ecologists and social scientists have very different traditions and true collaboration between the two is notoriously difficult. In addition, the success of the Ecosystem Approach depends on proper communication with stakeholders. Scientific interpretation of ecological data and its translation into language that can be grasped by decision makers is also a major challenge and requires an active dialogue between scientists and policymakers.
The aim of the Knowledge-based Sustainable Management for Europe’s Seas (KnowSeas) project is to build a base of scientific knowledge which can inform the practical choices faced by decision makers, using existing data and where information is missing filling data gaps using new approaches to provide proxy data.
Current Baseline
The new European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) will be the practical mechanism for implementing the Ecosystem Approach to the management of Europe’s seas. This legislation requires a major effort by EU Member States to develop indicators for “Good Environmental Status” by 2020. While there has been considerable effort expended to create a list of the ecological traits of healthy ecosystems, less is known about the social and economic processes and indicators which make up “Good Environmental Status” within the Ecosystem Approach.
The European Commission has also highlighted the need to link the new Common Fisheries Policy to the MSFD and to underline how healthy marine ecosystems are required for sustainable fisheries. This is an important change in thinking and demands a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to research.
Understanding the social and economic consequences of “Good Environmental Status” is a huge undertaking, and KnowSeas is not starting from scratch. Much information relevant to KnowSeas has been generated by a series of European research projects including European Land-Ocean Interaction Studies (ELOISE), European catchments, catchments changes and their impact on the coast (EUROCAT) and European Lifestyles and Marine Ecosystems (ELME), which was the immediate predecessor of KnowSeas.
ELME was a regional seas scale project that developed models and a database to examine the relationship between economic drivers, their resulting pressures on the marine environment and the changes they caused to habitats, species and ecosystems. The ELME project also contributed to Science and Policy Integration for Coastal System Assessment (SPICOSA) an EU Framework Programme 6 (FP6) project to model social and economic systems in European coastal zones and Southern European Seas: Assessing and Monitoring Ecosystem changes (SESAME), an FP6 project focussing on state changes and their economic and social drivers in the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
In addition to these projects, other studies carried out by individual EU member states as well as the Regional Seas Conventions such as The Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) for the Baltic Sea and the OSPAR Commission for the North-East Atlantic will also act as sources of data for the KnowSeas project.
Members of the KnowSeas consortium have participated in all of the studies mentioned above and have access to the existing knowledge and data generated by these projects. The KnowSeas project will also develop links with partners from outside the EU in order to benefit from non EU experiences with implementation of the Ecosystem Approach and will work closely with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme for Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) to help facilitate the links with this wider knowledge base.
The KnowSeas Contribution above the Baseline
The ELME project successfully modelled the relationship between economic and social drivers, environmental pressures and ecosystem state changes in Europe’s seas. The KnowSeas project will go beyond this to model the impacts on human welfare caused by ecosystem state changes and to examine the benefits, costs and social acceptance of policy actions in order to provide research outputs which will be immediately relevant to policymakers and stakeholders.
As well as the ecological pressures which were addressed at the regional sea scale in the ELME project (habitat loss, eutrophication, contamination and fisheries), KnowSeas will also examine climate change. These studies will be conducted at a sub-regional scale. Economic and social data at these subregional scales will be generated by disaggregation of existing national level data and by the use of innovative proxy data sets.
The new European marine policy framework has two elements, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Maritime Policy ‘Blue Book’. These policies provide a potential mechanism for linking sustainable use and conservation of our marine ecosystems. The KnowSeas project focuses on understanding how marine systems provide ecosystem goods and services, and how the benefits from these services can be utilised and sustained.
The project takes a systems approach. We consider the system as a whole in order to avoid compartmentalisation of individual components. Fish, for example, are goods for human consumption but can also help to maintain the resilience of an ecosystem to disturbance. So humans benefit from fish in two ways, directly as food and indirectly through the stability (and sustainability) the fish confer on the ecosystem. The KnowSeas group contains a wide variety of specialists with a joint capability to understand both the natural and social science perspectives relevant to the management of Europe’s regional seas.
KnowSeas will develop a number of tools for understanding and implementing the Ecosystem Approach to Management and will apply them, where appropriate, to each of Europe’s regional seas, modifying them where necessary. This will facilitate the delivery of practical solutions, based on Adaptive Management, within the tight time constraints set by new EU policy.
The Ecosystem Approach to Management, also known as Ecosystem-Based Management, is attracting great attention internationally in the development of marine policies, however there is no clear consensus on exactly what these terms mean. Our research, with integrated components from policy, ecology, economics and governance, will advance the state of the art globally as well as in Europe. By working within system boundaries set by the European Maritime Policy and the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive, it will make an important contribution to the rational management of Europe’s seas.
Conceptual Background
The DPSWR (Driver-Pressure-State-Welfare-Response) conceptual model is a useful starting point for analysing coupled social and ecological systems, as shown in Figure 1.1.
Drivers are largely economic and socio-political (e.g. industrial or agricultural development, trade, regulations, subsidies, etc.) and often reflect the way benefits are derived from ecosystem goods and services.
Pressures are the ways these Drivers burden the environment (e.g. agricultural run off of nutrients, pollution discharges, bottom trawling, introduction of alien species etc.).
State change is a measure (or proxy) of the consequences of Pressures on species or ecosystems.
Welfare are measures of changes (the ‘costs’) to human welfare as a result of State changes.
Response is the way society attempts to reduce Impact or compensate for it.
The diagram shows how most policy decisions are a trade off between the human Welfare cost (social and economic) and the benefits derived from continued social and economic activity. The Responses pose additional compliance costs that should also be considered in an overall analysis.
Figure 1.1 - DPSWR diagram modified to show the relationships between social and ecological components of the system and the trade off between environmental impact (the ‘costs’) and the benefits that society derives from exploiting natural system services (including ‘goods’). Natural system variability (not shown) also contributes to State change.
Figure 1.1 also illustrates the processes that are in the domain of social and natural sciences and highlights the need for multidisciplinarity. However, DPSWR does not lend itself to direct quantitative interpretation. One of the reasons for this is that the system components are often at non-matching scales (temporal and spatial) and there is no convenient ‘common currency’ between the social and natural science components. KnowSeas will examine the entire DPSWR relationship and place particular emphasis on the cost-benefit trade offs. Proposals for sustainable use of Europe’s Seas (in the EU Maritime Policy) will be explored as part of ‘D’ and Responses to all State changes ‘R’ will be considered within the framework of the proposed Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
Systems Approach to Enquiry
Marine systems are highly complex and interconnected, and processes within the seas occur on different scales (in time and space). Marine systems heavily disturbed by human pressures often display non-linear cause-effect relationships, and may have ‘memory effects’ (i.e. present system state may be a legacy of past practices). Attempts to manage parts of a system have often proven unsuccessful because of these properties and because of the difficulty in predicting the outcomes of human intervention. Figure 1.2 outlines the systems approach that is used by KnowSeas to develop working models at various scales.
Understanding complex systems is an iterative process that begins by appraising our current knowledge of the system through studying the available literature and data. This appraisal is followed by model construction, beginning with conceptual models, to represent our more detailed understanding of system components and pathways linking them. These models form the working hypotheses of how the system operates at the chosen scale.
Figure 1.2 - The overall systems analysis approach used for KnowSeas
At the same time, empirical information and metadata is gathered for the system studied. It is important to understand the system from two initial perspectives:
(1) how it is perceived to operate (this may involve transferring knowledge through analogy of better-known systems), and
(2) what scientific information and data are available about the system. At this point, it is important to:
(a) ensure that data or proxy data are available to populate the conceptual models, and
(b) adjust the modelling strategy to accommodate serious data gaps.
Proxy data gathering is a major innovative feature of KnowSeas.
The next stage in the process is to develop quantitative models from the conceptual models using real data. These models can be stochastic (probabilistic relationships) or dynamical (deterministic relationships) or a combination of both. In KnowSeas, we propose to combine these approaches and employ mapping systems that will make the outputs available to stakeholders user friendly. Having developed models, these can then be tuned and validated by hindcasting, testing them in well-understood systems, or by comparison of model outputs.
Having a working model that can be shared with stakeholders is an important part of the overall process of understanding how issues are prioritised in a complex environment. This enables the identification of trade-offs, choke points and potential innovative solutions to problems identified in each system or sub-system investigated. It is important to reiterate that marine systems are complex. Any attempt at modelling requires assumptions that must be clearly stated and tested. The strength of our approach is that it enables a wide range of co-factors to be considered: for example, we will not examine fisheries in isolation from the status of the ecosystem or the social and economic conditions of the fishers. This underpins the Ecosystem Approach to Management.
Application of the Systems Approach to Europe’s Seas
In applying the systems approach to Europe’s seas we considered the following issues:
1. The choice of scale for analysis/application
2. The likely availability of information/data
3. The key issues, including emergent issues
4. The most effective use of potentially available resources
This proposal is about “big picture” science and we cannot study all of the minutiae of fine scale process in Europe’s seas. There are remaining problems involving mismatches of scale within the EU policy framework. The MSFD focuses on national Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) beyond 1 nautical mile whereas the Maritime Policy will include all economic and social issues related to Europe’s seas, and in some cases beyond.
In the management of marine ecosystems, mismatches of scale in time or space may occur it two ways:
1. When ecosystem processes extend beyond the scale of management jurisdiction (e.g. commercially-exploited marine species caught in the open ocean which are dependent on coastal breeding and nursery habitats).
2. When management scales are too large to cope with local ecosystem requirements (e.g. the difficulties in adjusting Europe-wide rules on eutrophication and wastewater treatment to the variety of local conditions found in Europe).
We have chosen to focus KnowSeas on two interrelated scales – regional (regional seas) and sub-regional (national EEZs) - that are crucial to the implementation of the emergent EU policies and laws.
We shall undertake regional studies in areas covered by regional conventions or agreements: the Baltic (Helsinki Convention), the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention), the Mediterranean (Barcelona Convention) and the Black Sea (Bucharest Convention). For these studies, we shall identify the relevant scales, starting from the perspective of State changes (within the MSFD defined marine area) and working backwards (Pressures, Drivers) and forwards (Impacts, some Response factors) along the causal chain, focusing on issues identified as important using our conceptual models. Climate change pressures will be scaled down from large-scale models where necessary.
For the sub-regional scale case study analysis, we will focus on the entire marine area from the coast to the EEZ limit, examining the ways the study area is used for economic activity (including non-use) and the associated State changes and Impacts. Those Drivers and Pressures that are not of marine origin (i.e. not within the context of direct use of marine goods and services, as described in the EU Maritime Policy) shall mainly be dealt with at the regional level and the results downscaled to the EEZ-level study.
If, for example, there was a background of heavy eutrophication from land-based activities, it will be properly accounted for as one of the multiple Pressures on the EEZ and the information would be imported (scaled down) from the regional scale study. In most cases it would not be practicable to work out how much of the problem came from a particular country’s catchment. EEZ studies have been selected to highlight particular economic use combinations and/or issues of different scale (e.g. wind farms plus fishing plus conservation [all at the same scale]; or fishing plus eutrophication plus climate change [at three different scales]).
Existing databases constructed during ELOISE and ELME will be used for the KnowSeas project. The ELME database contains information at the regional sea scale for Pressures and State changes associated with habitat loss, eutrophication, contamination and fisheries, and Europe-wide data for Drivers. These data will be extended in several ways:
(1) Driver data will be disaggregated for regional sea catchments
(2) information will be gathered on social and economic Impacts
(3) more comprehensive information on regional-scale policy Response options will be gathered
(4) fisheries data will be reviewed and the gaps filled, and
(5) more comprehensive data on climate change and natural system variability will also be gathered.
The selection of case study regions and issues for analysis has been determined by:
(a) the legitimate potentially sustainable uses of marine space (defined in the EU Maritime Policy Blue Paper)
(b) the main environmental issues to be dealt with in the MSFD, including definition of Good Environmental Status (GES)
(c) The current major large scale issues (climate change and invasive species) that require global policy
(d) The availability of data, partners and infrastructure sufficient to develop and thoroughly test the methodology.
Table 1.1 illustrates the coverage of KnowSeas. One sub-regional case study has been selected from each region and the combination of regional studies and sub-regional case studies allows every use and issue to be examined. It also provides a means of testing the implications of mismatches of scale.
Table 1.1. - KnowSeas regional studies and sub-regional case studies showing issue selection criteria
Cumulative Pressures / State Changes and Marine Spatial Planning
Much previous research has focussed on the environmental consequences of single sectors. Fishing, for example, has often been managed with the single goal of attaining optimal yields and in isolation from its wider ecosystem effects. The ecosystem itself however is subjected to multiple pressures and the potential to produce a healthy stock of fish can be compromised by factors such as pollution, introduced (opportunistic) species, eutrophication and climate change.
The stochastic modelling work developed in ELME and similar projects provides new ways to integrate multiple pressures and to examine their consequences. This approach will be employed by KnowSeas with respect to the policy frame of the project, the ecological and economic modelling components and the regional seas case studies.
The importance of putting the ecosystem first was highlighted in a communication from the EU Directorate General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs which stated that “the goal of ecological sustainability must be placed before economic and social sustainability, since it is the precondition which makes them possible”. This is the essence of the Ecosystem Approach and our work will follow this pathway articulated by the Commission and fully examine its practical implications.
The Ecosystem Approach offers new ways to manage the marine environment. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is at the heart of the MSFD. Some early practical applications to date include Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, which have spatial plans for their EEZs and their territorial waters in place. Its basis is planning of all activities that impose pressures on the marine environment defined within given spatial and temporal boundaries. KnowSeas will develop a “Decision Space Analysis” tool to explore innovative approaches to MSP and test their practical applications in case studies. This analysis will examine all pressures on the marine environment and determine the most appropriate scale for their effective management. It will also examine the successes and failures of pilot MSP projects in Member States and in other parts of the world.
In many European cases MSP involves several different stakeholders with competing objectives. Common sectors include renewable energy developers, fishers and environmental stakeholders. At the regional seas level this situation is often further complicated by the transboundary nature of many marine environmental problems. The locations of boundaries of national EEZs (arbitrarily superimposed upon a continuous ecosystem) and differing national objectives and policy targets all lead to potential conflicts. WP6 will provide tools for use in collaboration with the regional seas Work Packages to explore and analyse a selection of case studies in MSP. These studies will identify potential spatial trade-offs, engage stakeholders from diverse sectors and promote a useful tool for decision makers to facilitate the integration of multiple sectors into the MSP process.
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