Robert E. Bowen

Socio-economic indicators and integrated coastal management

Abstract The need to better understand the linkages and interdependencies of socio-economic and coastal environmental dynamics has taken on a more deliberate role in the development and assessment of Integrated Coastal Management world-wide. The analysis and establishment of indicator-driven programs to assess change in coastal and watershed systems have increasingly moved to stress socio-economic forcings and impacts. This article serves to review the need for and provide an assessment of important frameworks designed to foster such integration. It argues that the evolution of the Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework, now in broad use, provides an essential contribution.

Challenges to the use of consensus building in integrated coastal management

Abstract An electronic forum involving 15 coastal managers was conducted in order to identify and explain the challenges involved in using consensus-building methods to resolve coastal management issues. The forums participants generated a list of ten challenges. Getting participants committed to the consensus-building process was identified as the major problem. Participants reported four factors that may affect negatively the willingness of participants to commit to the process. These factors are the novelty of consensus building, the lack of incentive to seek a compromise, the apprehension of having to negotiate and the uncertainty of the outcome. The paper concludes with proposed strategies to overcome these factors.

An Updated Review of Ciguatera Fish Poisoning: Clinical, Epidemiological, Environmental, and Public Health Management

Ciguatera Fish Poisoning (CFP) is the most frequently reported seafood-toxin illness in the world. It causes substantial human health, social, and economic impacts. The illness produces a complex array of gastrointestinal, neurological and neuropsychological, and cardiovascular symptoms, which may last days, weeks, or months. This paper is a general review of CFP including the human health effects of exposure to ciguatoxins (CTXs), diagnosis, human pathophysiology of CFP, treatment, detection of CTXs in fish, epidemiology of the illness, global dimensions, prevention, future directions, and recommendations for clinicians and patients. It updates and expands upon the previous review of CFP published by Friedman et al. (2008) and addresses new insights and relevant emerging global themes such as climate and environmental change, international market issues, and socioeconomic impacts of CFP. It also provides a proposed universal case definition for CFP designed to account for the variability in symptom presentation across different geographic regions. Information that is important but unchanged since the previous review has been reiterated. This article is intended for a broad audience, including resource and fishery managers, commercial and recreational fishers, public health officials, medical professionals, and other interested parties.

Light pollution in the sea.

Chemical pollutants, coastal zone destruction, habitat loss, nutrient discharges, hypoxic zones, algal blooms and catastrophic overfishing have all heavily impacted life in our oceans (Bowen and Depledge, 2006). Major efforts are being made worldwide to manage and minimise these threats. However, one particular pollutant, light, is still permitted to flood into our seas almost unchecked. It is alarming that as the intentional and unintentional illumination of the coastal zone and nearshore environment increases unabated, we still have little idea of the extent to which intertidal and sublittoral ecosystems are being affected. There is also growing concern regarding the introduction of light into the deep sea (Widder et al., 2005).

The land-locked and geographically disadvantaged states and the Law of the Sea

Abstract Among the groups attempting to maximize their interests at UNCLOS III was the Group of Land-locked and Geographically Disadvantaged States, countries with no seacoast at all or a coast that for some reason did not enable them to benefit from an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Over 50 such countries, quite diverse in most other respects, tried to enhance their limited bargaining strength through group action. While the land-locked states alone had had some successes at the first United Nations Conference on Transit Trade of Land-locked Countries, conditions were different at UNCLOS III, and even in coalition with ‘geographically disadvantaged’ countries their successes were more limited. This was due at least partly to the inability of the Group at any time to constitute a realistic ‘blocking third’ of Conference participants in order to prevent adoption of Treaty articles by a two-thirds vote, and also because the Group primarily comprised states with very little political power or influence. As a result, the modest concessions made to them in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea may in the future give them some leverage when bargaining with other countries for access to the sea and its resources, but they will still have to rely primarily on good relations in general with their coastal neighbors.

The management of Ocean and coastal resources in Colombia : an assessment

Funding was principally provided by the William H. Donner Foundation, as well as the Direccion General Maritima y Portuaria of the Armada Nacional in Colombia, the Pew Memorial Trust, and also by NOAA, National Sea Grant College Program, Department of Commerce, under Grant Nos. NABO-AA-D-00077 (E/L-1) and NA83-AA-D-00049 (E/L-1).

Developing a U.S. research strategy for marine polymetallic sulfides

Abstract Marine polymetallic sulfides (MPS) are recently discovered mineral occurrences of hydrothermal origin. Design of an appropriate research strategy to investigate the MPS deposits is a policy issue that the paper seeks to help resolve. The paper describes the relevant nature of MPS, reviews what has happened in the early stages of MPS research, and examines market conditions to help specify a scientifically and economically effective research strategy. This strategy is examined in several key dimensions: science versus research and development (RD role of government and private industry, geographic concentration; focus in time; and the locus of responsibility and scope of participation. Because of the early stage of work on MPS and the scant scientific evidence available, expected results of R&D are extremely uncertain. In this context, a sequential scientific approach is favored for government support. The strategy suggested by the papers analysis would permit geographically varied work sites ...