Economic dimensions have been somewhat neglected in research on nature policy and management of marine ecosystem exploitation. The current book aims to ?ll this gap. It examines the mismatches of natural, socio-economic, and regulatory processes and regimes in time and space. This involves dealing with the complexity and uncertainty that are inherent to the interaction of marine ecosystems and economic systems. The approach adopted is based on the idea that the design of sustainability policies requires an integration of insights from resource, environmental, and ecological economics on theonehandandmarinebiologyandenvironmentalsciencesontheotherhand.Forthis purpose, use is made of integrated assessment on the basis of theoretical and applied mathematical models. The book is the result of a large project, hosted by the Department of Spatial E- nomics of the Free University in Amsterdam, under the supervision of the ?rst author. TheprojectreceivedfundingfromtheNetherlandsOrganisationforScienti?cResearch (NWO), through a “priority program”titled“SustainableUseandConservationof- rine Living Resources,” which was initiated and coordinated by Prof. Wim Wolff of the University of Groningen. The work reported here has greatly bene?ted from external advice given by marine biologists who participated in this research program.
This book offers an environmental-economic analysis of exploited ecosystems with a clear policy orientation. The study tries to move beyond traditional economic fishery analysis in two respects. First, several theoretical and numerical models are offered that combine economic and ecological descriptions of fisheries. These models give special attention to spatial processes as well as to combining exploitation and conservation objectives. Second, valuation and stakeholder concerns are addressed in empirical analyses employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The latter is done by using advanced methods of monetary valuation. In addition, the first part of the book presents short, introductory overviews of integrated assessment, economic modeling of fishery management, and incorporating uncertainty in fisheries analysis. These introductions will allow readers of a variety of disciplines to create a sufficient background so as to be able to read later parts of the book. This first part also includes a chapter in which traditional and recent ideas on fisheries policy are critically discussed and where possible synthesized. Many of the applied studies reported relate to a multifunctional marine ecosystem area in the Netherlands, known as the Wadden Sea ("Waddenzee"), which extends to Germany and Denmark. The resulting approaches, models and policy insights are nevertheless sufficiently general and innovative to be of interest to a broad audience.
