Large Marine Ecosystems: A Little-Known Program?

NOAA's Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) program is a management framework for monitoring the health of the world's coastal areas through a strong partnership between the IUCN, UNEP, the and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Committee.  While we may have heard the term "LME" once or twice, it seems strange that we don't know more about the management utility of such an overarching, global effort to document and assess the marine environment.  As I explored the website, I started thinking that maybe this information isn't widely advertised because these sixty-four LMEs dotting coasts around the world are used less for streamlining management and more for depicting economic benefits.  Reports estimate that these LMEs are collectively worth $12 trillion annually through fishing, resource extraction, coastal protection, and more.   


So why don't we use this type of messaging to support management activities at the regional level?  Their five-module assessment process measures several indicators in five categories for a comprehensive valuation of the area's net worth.  With places ranging from the Arctic Ocean, to New Zealand, and to the Coral Triangle, this must be the ultimate model of global interdisciplinarity.  With marine spatial planning efforts, continued energy development, state conservation projects, and federal mandates, the ocean is a blur of lines and boundaries.  With these existing frameworks, do LMEs have a chance for being recognized as useful management measures or will they remain an intellectual valuation exercise useful mainly for ensuring that we extract the maximum monetary value from our coasts? 

These LME boundaries are based solely on physical features (bathymetry, hydrography, productivity, and biodiversity) of the seascape, so what argument can be made for designating them as management units?  I ask these questions not to diminish the accomplishments of this framework but more to call attention to the fact that it must be extremely difficult to draw lines deciding which areas or human activities to include and which to omit.  More so than in forests or grasslands, the ocean's fluidity defies rectangular boundaries - if only we could reshape our own management tendencies to mimic its natural variability! 

At the end of the day, it is easy to see why conservation and management efforts move slowly.  There are so many people coming together to make nuanced and often impassioned decisions that will eventually impact the way we use our environment.  As many of us work on local, state, or regional domestic management, it is stimulating to broaden our horizons and think about the grand scope and coordination of the efforts going on around the world.


Learn more about the valuation of global LMEs through these reports.