Posted on June, 12 2006

Fishing provides an essential food source as well as livelihoods for millions of people. Yet many of the world’s fisheries have extremely serious impacts on marine ecosystems and many fisheries are themselves adversely affected by other human impacts on marine ecosystems. WWF believes Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) of marine fisheries provides a framework for humanity to secure ongoing production of food resources while enabling these ecosystems to continue to thrive and evolve. Although this paper provides a conceptual framework for the development of a global policy and best operational practice for effective ecosystem management, it is of course not exhaustive. The very essence of an effective Ecosystem-Based Management framework is that  it is adaptive.

This paper describes in detail the concept of Ecosystem-Based Management in marine capture fisheries. It is designed to identify the main issues and propose policies and implementation guidance to help resolve those issues.

(The PDF document available here is a 2006 update of the 2002 report)