Community-Led Initiatives and SDG14: Life below Water
The movements of community-led initiatives considered in this report are not specifically active protecting marine habitats. However, their activities do have indirect benefits for marine ecology, by reducing outputs of pollutions and wastes that ultimately reach aquatic habitats and cause damage, by reducing dependencies on fossil fuel extraction in offshore areas, promoting dietary choices that reduce pressure on overharvested fish stocks and other forms of marine life, and helping reduce ocean acidification associated with increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Traditional coastal and island communities play increasingly important roles in co-management programmes that seek to reconcile safeguarding local livelihoods based on marine resources with conservation and protection of aquatic life. Such actions take various forms, for example through transferring managemeny rights and resposibilities to municipalities in Norway, rebuilding local and regional management institutions in ways that integrate the skills and interests of both indigenous and non-indigenous fishing communities in British Columbia, and integrated management systems involving multiple stakeholders in the Netherlands. It is possible these approaches could learn from and contribute actions by CLIs to help protect marine life.
- Johnsen, J.P., Hersoug, B., 2014. Local empowerment through the creation of coastal space? Ecology and Society 19. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06465-190260
- Pinkerton, E., Angel, E., Ladell, N., Williams, P., Nicolson, M., Thorkelson, J., Clifton, H., 2014. Local and regional strategies for rebuilding fisheries management institutions in coastal British Columbia: what components of comanagement are most critical? Ecology and Society 19. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06489-190272
- Vugteveen, P., van Katwijk, M.M., Rouwette, E., Lenders, H.J.R., Hanssen, L., 2015. Developing an effective adaptive monitoring network to support integrated coastal management in a multiuser nature reserve. Ecology and Society 20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07228-200159