Operationalizing Ocean Health: Toward Integrated Research on Ocean Health and Recovery to Achieve Ocean Sustainability

Abstract

Protecting the ocean has become a major goal of international policy as human activities increasingly endanger the integrity of the ocean ecosystem, often summarized as ''ocean health.'' By and large, efforts to protect the ocean have failed because, among other things, (1) the underlying socio-ecological pathways have not been properly considered, and (2) the concept of ocean health has been ill defined. Collectively, this prevents an adequate societal response as to how ocean ecosystems and their vital functions for human societies can be protected and restored. We review the confusion surrounding the term ''ocean health'' and suggest an operational ocean-health framework in line with the concept of strong sustainability. Given the accelerating degeneration of marine ecosystems, the restoration of regional ocean health will be of increasing importance. Our advocated transdisciplinary and multi-actor framework can help to advance the implementation of more active measures to restore ocean health and safeguard human health and well-being. ll

Public Perceptions of Ocean-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal: The Nature-Engineering Divide?

“…While nature-based solutions with potentially higher levels of acceptance can contribute to a portfolio of measures counteracting climate change, other measures with potentially lower acceptance and/or larger detrimental environmental side effects will likely still be needed to reach international climate goals. This in particular holds since ecosystem restoration, particularly for seagrass ecosystems or open ocean ecosystems, is still in its infancy (Franke et al, 2020) even though conservation of coastal ecosystems and restoration of mangroves are well-established practices. Moreover, coastal ecosystems are themselves under threat due to anthropogenic pressures arising e.g., from eutrophication and climate change (Macreadie et al, 2019;Lovelock and Reef, 2020).…”

The Baltic Health Index (BHI): Assessing the social–ecological status of the Baltic Sea

“…However, clearly impacts such as eutrophication and fisheries are linked, and additive and/or synergistic effects of cumulative drivers affect their status which should be reflected in the reference level (Giakoumi et al., 2015; Halpern, Frazier, et al, 2015; Hunsicker et al, 2015). In general, reference points should be science informed, but optimally would be to develop these reference points in a co‐design process with diverse stakeholders and scientists in order to define goals of restorative and active intervention and implement appropriate management measures (Franke et al, 2020). Learning exercises are needed to successfully operationalize and implement ocean management strategies that integrate environmental, social, cultural, health at local and regional scales.…”

“…Learning exercises are needed to successfully operationalize and implement ocean management strategies that integrate environmental, social, cultural, health at local and regional scales. These different ‘management experiments’, that is, adjusting different solutions in different regions, can help to potentially overcome conflicting societal interests and to identify common values (Franke et al, 2020). Therewith, different regions could learn from different management practices.…”

“…The health of the oceans and especially of their coastal areas is inextricably linked to human well‐being and societal development, as marine ecosystems generate a large share of services needed and used by humans (Franke et al, 2020; Neumann et al., 2017). Unfortunately, human activities often have negative impacts on marine resources (Halpern, Frazier, et al, 2015) and utilization of ecosystem services (or benefits, Díaz et al., 2015) has caused rapid changes in coastal seas world‐wide (Cloern et al., 2016; Duarte et al., 2020; Jouffray et al., 2020).…”

Taking the Long View for Oceans and Human Health Connection through Community Driven Science

“…Over the last two decades, new initiatives (e.g., One Health, Nature and Health, Oceans and Human Health) and many scholarly articles and studies have highlighted the benefits of nature contact to human health, but these studies are primarily investigating how nature exposure benefits human health and well-being (reviewed by [ 5 , 6 ]). There is a growing movement calling for reciprocal healing of nature and people [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 7 , 8 ]. However, it is not within the scope of this paper to exhaustively review this literature.…”