Coastal and Marine Management

Coastal and marine management sits at the intersection of ecology, economics, and governance, asking how human societies can use the ocean without degrading the systems that make that use possible. Marine spatial planning, ecosystem-based management, and integrated coastal zone frameworks all attempt to coordinate competing claims on coastal waters — shipping, fisheries, aquaculture, conservation, tourism — within a single coherent policy structure rather than managing each sector in isolation. A persistent challenge is accounting for cumulative impacts, since stressors that appear acceptable individually can combine to push ecosystems past critical thresholds, and current monitoring and legal tools often struggle to capture these interactions at the scales where they matter. Researchers are also working to align ocean governance with blue economy ambitions, testing whether sustainable economic development and healthy marine ecosystems are genuinely compatible or whether that framing papers over fundamental trade-offs that stakeholder engagement processes alone cannot resolve.

Works

127,304

Total citations

634,113

Keywords

Marine Spatial PlanningEcosystem-Based ManagementIntegrated Coastal ManagementOcean GovernanceBlue EconomyCumulative Impacts