- Summary
Designing law and policy for the health and resilience of marine and coastal ecosystems
This is a summary of research findings into options for policy and legislative change to enable ecosystem-based management across scales in Aotearoa New Zealand.
(July 2023)
Ecosystem-based approaches to marine management, which integrate marine law and policy across sectors, communities and scales, are increasingly advocated for in international policy debates and scholarly literature. We highlight critical and timely opportunities in Aotearoa New Zealand’s evolving legal context to support an ecosystem-based approach across fisheries regulation, biodiversity conservation, environmental effects management, and Indigenous or customary rights.
Given the scale of proposed law reform affecting the ocean in Aotearoa, there are important global lessons to be elucidated from (and for) the Aotearoa New Zealand experience, revealing the potential for law to center the health of ocean ecosystems and related people in integrated marine decision-making.
