The roadmap to sustainable prosperity: An implementation tool for marine ecosystem-based management

Background/Question/Methods

The Roadmap to Sustainable Prosperity provides a framework within which planning, legislation, regulation, enforcement, monitoring, and adaptive management can be integrated and aligned for consistency, across jurisdictional and geographic scales. At a high level, the Roadmap can help governments and stakeholders examine key issues and align expectations around ecosystem-based management (EBM) components. When tied more closely to a particular management context, it can help relate and explain specific areas and issues of resource use and conservation planning, identify important linkages and dependencies, and develop and prioritise action plans and strategic approaches. The Roadmap describes a set of necessary and sufficient enabling outcomes that when achieved lead to a set of strategic outcomes (defined according to the people-planet-profit triple bottom-line) that in combination lead to sustainable prosperity. A companion document provides background, key term definitions, concept elaborations, and examples; which together with the Roadmap was created by a multidisciplinary working group from government, academic, non-profit, and industrial institutions. 

Results/Conclusions

Ultimately, the Roadmap provides a concise view of the complexities of EBM, making the objectives and outcomes more transparent and accessible. It can thus support the design, implementation, and monitoring of EBM initiatives in any jurisdictional and spatial context. This presentation will guide the audience through construction and application of the Roadmap using a customized marine planning example from British Columbia, Canada.