The challenge in supporting enhanced and sustainable uses of the marine domain is to enable current and future growth in the blue economy and the associated development of coastal livelihoods, while equally supporting sustainable social, economic and environmental outcomes.
This was the message underpinning MSEAS, the recent Marine Socio-Ecological Systems Symposium in Yokahama, Japan. MarineSABRES was represented at the conference by Zacharoula Kyriazi, a Research Fellow at MaREI, UCC. Within the project framework, Zacharoula contributes to research that focuses on marine socio-ecological systems analysis, considering the social, economic and ocean governance implications of these systems, in addition to the environmental.
Zacharoula presented the MarineSABRES range of methodological approaches, such as stakeholder engagement, the Simple SES, and new Causal Loop Diagrams that have been developed and applied during the project."We have come up with some very useful outcomes with the continuous contribution of our invaluable stakeholders from all the Demonstration Areas (DAs) and from the application of other methodologies. We also have some upcoming work on regionalised Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP) scenarios for the DAs and for identification and assessment based on these scenarios. MSEAS has been a wonderful opportunity to present this work to the wider marine research community."
The importance (and challenges) of studying and understanding marine socio-ecological systems and the causal interactions within them were prevalent throughout the different conference sessions. MarineSABRES' research and outputs will work to address the need for simplified approaches that are comprehensive to both practitioners and non-scientists, as well as address the need for better and detailed data, both quantitative and qualitative.
The MSEAS Symposium and the community of scientists that made it happen are promising initiatives that will minimise the challenges and increase the opportunities for managing marine socio-ecological systems towards a truly sustainable Blue Economy.
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