Legal Bedrock for Rebuilding America's Ocean Ecosystems

摘要

Recent discussions about ocean policy reform have focused on ecosystem-based management, which fully incorporates humans and considers the cumulative impacts of their activities on ecosystems and the services they provide (7). This approach is logical given the highly interconnected social-ecological systems of the ocean (2) and may be best realized through comprehensive marine spatial planning and ocean zoning (3). But U.S. ocean governance as currently configured cannot easily accommodate ecosystem-based management (4).rnFederal waters, which include the territorial sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), reach from the 3- or 9-nm (nautical mile) borders of state waters out to the 200-nm outer boundary of the EEZ, an ocean area in which the United States has rights to explore, exploit, and manage living and nonliving resources (5-7).