Sustaining the World's Large Marine Ecosystems

Future Needs of the
LME Approach Worldwide
Gotthilf Hempel
Kiel, Germany
For the conservation of nature and natural resources in the World’s oceans and
in coastal waters, some approaches target individual species or groups of
species, others aim to protect certain habitats and their biodiversity. The holistic
concept of Large Marine Ecosystems goes one step further by encompassing
large areas reaching from the sea shore into the open sea above the shelf and
continental slope. In the course of three decades, the LME concept of an
ecosystem-based approach to resource management has been adopted
worldwide. The LME criteria, modules and indicators have shown to be
sufficiently robust and flexible to be applicable in all climate zones and in regions
differing greatly in their socio-economic and political condition.
The LME concept became the framework for national and international
programmes of LME wide research and monitoring and for the development of
management strategies and governance. In the United States, the Northeast
Shelf was the starting point for the development of LME oriented projects. The
LME approach has been followed in other parts of the world, particularly in
developing countries eligible for funding by the Global Environment Facility
(GEF). There are presently 16 GEF-funded LME projects, in Africa, Asia, Latin
America, the Caribbean and eastern Europe (Sherman et al., this publication).
The LME programmes serve various stakeholder groups: for the environmentalists,
LME projects are striving towards the recovery of depleted fish stocks,
restoration of degraded habitats, reduction of nutrient enrichment, coping with the
invasion of alien species, conservation of biodiversity, and adaptation to climate
change. For society, LME projects strive for the sustainable development of
marine resources and services for growing populations of coastal communities,
coastal states and the global market. Marine scientists – both pure and applied –
learn much about complex biological interaction in the ecosystem and the
different roles of natural driving forces and of man in altering the system in the
past and at present.
My relations to the LME movement date back to its very early days in the 1970´s
and I returned to it in the 1990´s when Angola, Namibia and South Africa with the
111