Action Proposal
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ECOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND BIOSPHERE RESERVES TO HELP NATURE CONSERVATION PRACTITIONERS AND SOCIETY TO SET PRIORITIES IN COASTAL & MARINE AREAS: A meeting of UNESCO-MAB, the European MARS Network & the EU NoE MARBEF to strengthen Pan-European cooperation Venice, 12-14 May 2005 Introductory Presentation by Pierre Lasserre Université Pierre & Marie Curie – Paris VI UNESCO-ROSTE, Palazzo Zorzi, Venice, Italy 1 1. BACKGROUND: There is, today, a widespread realisation that coastal and marine environment is strongly influenced by accelerating changes, largely derived from human activity, directly stemming from local pressure or indirectly from climate change. This awareness is fostering plans to conserve and protect marine biodiversity and to establish protected areas integrated into larger land and sea spatial planning. Even though some significant improvements in the quality status of European seas have been achieved, many problems have yet to be fully addressed and major threats still persist. Most societies living along the coastal zone have strong cultural relations with their environments. Each coastal society has its own particular nature, which is a projection of its structures and its values. Thus, understanding of traditional, popular, and specialized knowledge enables us better to understand the links that humans have forged with their environments and the resources that they use. Many human activities have an impact on marine and coastal and marine ecosystems but there is very limited knowledge on their real impact. Classical plans established for marine systems protection, are often oriented towards local measures of biodiversity conservation, in terms of species and habitats, with little tangible effort being directed to large scale inventories and monitoring of marine species and ecosystems. Quantified estimates of the role of biodiversity in sustaining ecosystem goods and services is often used as a justification for conservation, however, little is known about the circumstances under which the two approaches actually contribute to each other. Schematic diagram showing important natural processes and human pressures that affect European coastal and marine ecosystems and resources. It must be clear that a greater understanding of the functional role which biodiversity plays in highly diverse marine systems is a requirement for their proper conservation and sound management. The fact that conservation measures of marine species, species complexes 2 and ecosystems can cover, at best, only a rather small part of European coastal and areas, clearly shows the need for a broader strategy for the management of biodiversity. Furthermore, the relationships between marine biodiversity and ecosystem functions are still largely descriptive and unquantified. Therefore, greatly expanded basic research on coastal and marine ecosystems and their biodiversity, applied to solving specific problems, is essential to determine what resources are present, how to protect and manage them properly, and how to detect change over time. In order to comprehend how biodiversity affects ecological functions we need to understand the natural dynamics and processes of populations and ecosystems in theory and practice. Marine biodiversity should rise from relative obscurity to become an important issue in European policy and science. In addition, managers and decision- makers must work hand-in-hand with scientists and better make known their needs, thus making research in phase with the demands of society. 1.1 - The UNESCO-MAB Programme and coastal and marine biosphere reserves. The degradation of the environment, conflict over space and resources, demographic issues, the overall poor conditions of water basins, adverse effects of global change, etc. – all these phenomena and factors have led to the need to establish management measures based on a equitable partnership between human beings and nature. This also applies to coastal and marine areas. • There are clear provisions on the need to establish marine and coastal protected areas under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and several other multilateral environmental agreements and processes. On several occasions, the International Co-ordinating Council of MAB (ICC) has reiterated the importance to enhance the number and quality of coastal & marine biosphere reserves (Batisse 1990; Lasserre et al. 1994). The definition of “coastal and marine” refers in a pragmatic sense to biosphere reserves on the coast and which have a special interest to address the above mentioned provisions, at the interface between the land and the sea. This also applies to coastal and marine areas, where 49 coastal and marine biosphere reserves have been established world wide, of which 39 are located in the European region. • In the specific geographic context of Europe, the 2002 Conference of EuroMAB (Rome) underlined the need to develop a marine agenda for EuroMAB marine and coastal biosphere reserves. This workshop focussing on coastal and marine biosphere reserves (c&m BRs) took place in Finland, 22-25 October 2003. • Furthermore, the International Coordinating Council for MAB, at its 18th Session (UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, 25-29 October 2004) “strongly supported the development of a marine research agenda for MAB, welcomed cooperation with MARS and stressed that this could constitute a model activity to be replicated in other MAB regions” (SC-04/CONF.204/14, Final Report, item 6). 3 1. 2 - The Council of Europe and UNEP Dubrovnik declaration on marine and coastal biodiversity and protected areas. • Almost simultaneously, the Council of Europe and UNEP organized a symposium on marine and coastal biodiversity and protected areas in Dubrovnik (16-17 October 2003), at which a declaration was produced, to which UNESCO subscribed. This declaration calls upon regional and subregional cooperative measures to be implemented, a platform for promoting dialogue to be convened regularly, and a mechanism for exchanging relevant information and for promoting cooperation among governments and relevant international organizations and regional conventions to be set up. • Furthermore, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe took note (5 May 2004) of the Final Recommendations of the Dubrovnik symposium, for its transmission to the Council of Europe member States so that they may apply tem as appropriate in their national policies and practice. The Recommendation underlines, inter alia: o “European coastal and marine ecological network needs to be established as a conceptual and scientific framework” [and] “should be developed through existing mechanisms and institutions, including in particular the sites designated under global instruments such as […] the UNESCO MAB Programme (biosphere reserves)”. o “many human activities have an impact on marine and coastal ecosystems but very limited knowledge on their real impact is available. Therefore, it is recommended that research networks be encouraged, such as the European Union’s Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning (MARBEF) Network of Excellence, which aim to integrate the most reliable scientific knowledge into policy-making and management decisions”. 1. 3 - Scientists to help conservation practitioners and society to set priorities: MARS and its EU Networks of Excellence (MARBEF and Marine Genomics). • In light of the importance of scientific research and monitoring for the proper management of coastal marine ecosystems (including the need for specific methodological approaches due to the specificity of the marine environment), it is necessary that UNESCO-MAB enters into key partnerships so as to carry out effective and innovative research and monitoring activities in coastal marine biosphere reserves, with the aim of applying their findings for a better management of individual biosphere reserves, and enhancing the quality and effectiveness of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves as a whole. • One concrete opportunity to this end was provided by the offers of the President of the European MARS Network and the Coordinator of the EU-Network of Excellence “Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning” (MARBEF), to explore cooperative modalities with UNESCO. 4 • The European network of Marine Research Stations (MARS) was established at the initiative of leading coastal-marine laboratories and institutions to stimulate research and promote education and advanced training in marine biology, and to develop long- term monitoring and indicators of the variability of marine biodiversity and ecosystem function. A 1st meeting held at UNESCO, Paris, in 1994, resulted in an enlarged membership of 80 coastal-marine stations from all over Europe (i.e. Western and Central Eastern Europe, and the Balkans). • The 2nd MARS Conference held in Venice (2000), at the invitation of UNESCO-ROSTE (sponsored by the European Union DG Research) was followed by the 3rd MARS Conference held in Amsterdam (November 2003), and gave rise to the European concerted action MARS/BIOMARE. The contributions of BIOMARE include: (1) the identification and description of 100 European marine biodiversity research sites1, that provide the geographical skeleton for the implementation of long-term and large-scale research (Warwick et al., 2003); (2) a critical review of European marine biodiversity indicators and monitoring (the challenge being to construct a scientifically solid system that still is useful to the interested scientist, the CZM manager and