Richard McLaughlin, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi
Wyndylyn Von Zharen, Texas Institute of Oceanography, Texas A&M University Galveston

Background
The shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) stretches 3,540 miles making it the ninth largest body of water in the world.1 About twenty million people live in the U.S. coastal counties that border the Gulf. Many of these counties are among the fastest growing in the nation. A number of key sectors of the U.S. economy such as offshore energy, vessel construction, fishing, marine transportation, and tourism are concentrated in the GoM.

      Large portions of the Gulf have been seriously impacted by a combination of natural and anthropogenic stresses. These pressures have caused a variety of environmental and economic threats including degraded water quality, loss of critical habitat, introduction of invasive species, depleted fish stocks, increased coastal erosion, greater vulnerability to coastal hazards, and other problems.

      Traditionally, coastal and ocean areas have been managed and governed at specific, isolated levels with little cooperation or collaboration across local, state, tribal, federal, or international boundaries. Coordinated management of policies or laws to minimize cumulative impacts has been rarely undertaken. Fragmented laws, overlapping and unclear jurisdictions, policies that are not adaptive and responsive to change, and limited communication among coastal and marine law, policy, and manager practitioners are common in the GoM region.

      Because of these limitations, coupled with the complexity of new and competing uses of a finite resource and increased understanding of the interrelatedness of the various systems within the GoM ecosystem and in part due to exponentially increasing complexity as multiple factors are considered, this traditional approach has been rejected in favor of ecosystem-based management (EBM) which considers the cumulative impacts on the entire ecosystem.

      To be successful, an EBM strategy requires cross-jurisdictional, interdisciplinary management goals as well as adaptive, collaborative governance mechanisms. Equally critical to the strategy is a strong cooperative management component,2 one that enables a sharing of decision-making power, responsibility, and risk among governments and other stakeholders including but not limited to, resources users, environmental interests, experts, and wealth generators. Cooperative management is a form of power-sharing. Cooperative management initiatives begin with the identification of the issues and recognition of a need to make changes. This strategy fosters joint accountability, thus decreasing the likelihood of a stakeholder acting solely in her or his own vested interests and basing decisions exclusively on short-term goals for single issues. The EBM strategy must also be adaptive. Adaptive stewardship is essential because of the complexity of the Gulf of Mexico and the continual development of knowledge about its inhabitants and resources.

      Recent efforts by the Pew Oceans Commission,3 U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy,4 and the Bush Administration’s U.S. Ocean Action Plan5 attempt to provide a foundation to advance a more effective EBM approach to coastal and ocean policy. Although these important efforts have generated momentum for changing policies, it is not yet clear how the EBM and other reforms will evolve.

      It was within this context that 37 experts participated in a workshop, entitled Managing for a Healthy Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem: Obstacles, Opportunities, and Tools, held November 1-2, 2007 in Corpus Christi, Texas. The workshop was a collaborative effort between the Co-principal Investigators and the Environmental Law Institute with funding from the National Sea Grant Law Center and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.6 The following summarizes the most important findings of this workshop.

Obstacles and Challenges to EBM in the GoM
Workshop participants stressed that developing and employing EBM principles will be an essential step towards resolving the multitude of challenges facing the GoM. However, significant obstacles must be overcome. These obstacles are unique to the GoM and include a lack of agreement on a common set of objectives among stakeholders. Despite the difficulty, there needs to be greater effort in facilitating a consensus on a clearly defined set of outcomes. With consensus will come a commitment for change from voters and the development of political leadership.

      Important decisions will have to be made in the absence of complete ecosystem information. Ecosystems are dynamic biophysical systems in which organisms interact with each other and the physical environment in complex ways. Marine ecosystems may shift suddenly and much remains unpredictable and uncertain in how they operate. Moreover, many of these processes occur at multiple scales from microscopic events to large interacting populations and from geographically small areas to large-scale regional systems. The difficulty in fully understanding the complexity of these events must not become an insurmountable barrier to making management decisions.

      EBM in the GoM would move forward more quickly if there was a serious regional problem that could serve as a common denominator to bring people together. Many participants suggested that the threat from hurricanes may represent such an organizing principle, but do not believe that this has actually occurred in practice. The threat posed by toxic algal blooms in the GoM was also suggested as the type of regional problem that may someday become a unifying issue.

      The GoM is a large and heavily-used body of water that is important to a significant and diverse number of stakeholders. Many of these stakeholders such as the energy industry, recreational fishermen, ports and maritime shipping interests, real estate developers, and the tourism industry have tremendous influence over policy decisions in the region. In addition, the five states that border the GoM have traditionally defended “states rights” and their political autonomy from federal mandates. In light of this political tradition, federally mandated EBM initiatives or even regionally devised approaches may be resisted. The breadth and divergent interests of these stakeholders and state governments make the GoM a difficult area to achieve consensus. There will be little chance of success for EBM initiatives without input and buy-in from these and other stakeholders in the region.

      After EBM plans are developed, sufficient funding needs to be provided for proper implementation and enforcement. Expansion in government regulatory and administrative activities or compensation for private property impacts is not possible without additional funding sources. Innovative partnerships between the public and private sectors should be explored to develop new sources of revenue to move EBM forward in the region.

      Finally, if EBM is to be properly implemented, there must be some resolution to the reluctance of permit holders, stakeholders, and government agencies to fully embrace adaptive management principles. Institutions and individuals rely on the finality of permitting and other administrative decisions to execute projects and make informed investment decisions. Adaptive management does not provide that finality, but instead advocates change in direction when new information is discovered. Other institutional pressures including fear of potential litigation, commitment to decisions already made, and bureaucratic biases are serious obstacles that must be overcome for adaptive management and EBM to be successful.

Opportunities to Improve EBM in the GoM
EBM in the GoM would be improved by creating innovative visualization tools that will provide an easily accessible information source for integrating law, policy, human dimensions, and science, and identifying small groups and NGOs with which to partner. These groups are often drivers for change. Partnering with the National Estuary Programs, for example, is important as they may be best suited as test beds and because they are at the right scale. The Gulf of Mexico Alliance also has the potential to assist with these efforts because it builds upon existing programs and resources and adds tasks that lead to small incremental changes. The Alliance has strong federal political support that should not be underestimated.

      Benefits may also be achieved by looking at the environment from an ecosystem services perspective as a way to put a value on those services to gain public and legislative support. Providing policymakers with empirical data on the full value of ecosystem services is essential for them to make informed and persuasive political decisions. It also allows uninformed stakeholders to understand that the natural ecosystem of the GoM has hidden monetary and non-monetary values that need to be protected and conserved thereby providing a useful framework for outreach and education efforts.

      Stakeholder involvement must be inclusive and transparent. The general public and interested stakeholders should be involved as early as possible. Active participation in the planning and implementation of EBM initiatives is essential to the long-range success of any program. Providing full information and an opportunity for input will avoid the problems of opposition by stakeholders who either misunderstand potential impacts or feel that their concerns have not been considered.

      Monitoring and enforcement measures must be well defined and fully funded. This should include a robust program capable of tracking scientific baselines to demonstrate success through environmental indicators. Incentives should be provided for citizen-based monitoring and involvement.

      Any problem being addressed through EBM should be examined comprehensively and effectively bound in size and time. Using a “large marine ecosystem” model may or may not be an appropriate geographical scale de­ pending on the specific problem being ad­ dressed. The focus should be on matching appropriate size or scale to achieve goals given existing institutional and jurisdictional constraints. Furthermore, temporal scales should be matched to avoid slow governance changes lagging behind quick ecosystem degradation or quick governance changes overtaking slow ecosystem processes.

      Implementation plans should drill down on key issues with firm time constraints. This includes provisions for specific action items to be undertaken within a specific period of time at a specific cost.

      Indicator species or issues should be used, when possible, to capture the public’s imagination and serve as both an issue upon which to build support and to indicate basic health of the GoM over time. Potential examples include:

• Marine protected areas such as the Flower Garden Banks Marine San­ctuary or the “Islands in the Stream” initiative to develop a network of GoM marine protected areas in the U.S. and Mexico;
• Specific charismatic species such as sperm whales, tarpon, bluefin tuna, billfish, whale sharks, manta rays, or sea turtles; and
• Regional problems such as threats from catastrophic weather events, harmful algal blooms, or sea-level rise.

Stakeholders should have a role in identifying and developing these indicators. If possible, indicators should be chosen that are already being monitored to build upon existing data and programs. Moreover, existing baseline data should be used as an indication of success or failure and managers must be willing to adapt based upon ongoing evaluation criteria.

Conclusion  
There is a strong consensus that for EBM to be successful in improving the health and stewardship of the GoM, a strong and vibrant cooperative management regime is required, one in which stakeholders agree on a list of specific objectives and have a willingness to achieve cooperative management goals. This, of course, is no easy task and will require a long-term commitment to improving our understanding of scientific baseline information as well as developing better policies and strategies within the region. If this can be achieved, rather than a potential arena for competition and strife due to the ever increasing complexity of issues, the GoM may someday serve as a model of effective cooperative management and collaborative governance. 

Endnotes
1.  See, e.g., EPA’s website: http://www.epa.gov/ gmpo/about/facts.html. The Gulf of Mexico borders five U.S. states to the north, Mexico’s eastern shoreline and the Yucatan Peninsula to the south, and to the east, it is bordered by the island of Cuba.
2.  See W.M. von Zharen, Ocean Ecosystem Stewardship, 23 Wm. & Mary Envt. L. & Pol’y Rev. 1, 85 (1998) (citing the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Sustainable Strategies for Oceans: A Co-Management Guide 2 [1990] 12). Cooperative management is synonymous with co-management, joint management, and collaborative management.
3.  Pew Oceans Commission, America’s Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change (2003) available at http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_detail.aspx?id=130 .
4.  U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century Final: Report of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (2004) available at http://oceancommission.gov/documents/welcome.html .
5.  U.S. Ocean Action Plan: The Bush Administration’s Response to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (2004) available at  http://ocean.ceq.gov/actionplan.pdf . (no longer available - decommissioned)
6.  Katherine Mengerink, Jay Austin, and Rebecca Gruby of the Environmental Law Institute co-organized the workshop.