The world's coasts and oceans support an enormous amount of marine biodiversity and provide substantial services to humans from nutrient cycling to fisheries production. But the seas are in trouble. Better, ecosystem-based management of the marine environment is needed that recognizes the many needs and interconnections between biodiversity and human uses.

Marine ecosystems are complex and the human benefits from marine resources are diverse. Because of this complexity and diversity, marine ecosystem-based management can be difficult to define and implement, but much progress is being made.


The aim of this toolkit is to guide managers and practitioners in the use of common tools for regional planning and to illustrate through case studies approaches to advance ecosystem-based management by jointly addressing multiple objectives in conservation, fisheries and coastal hazards.

This toolkit provides guidance on some of the tools that help in the assessment of marine ecosystems and the identification of opportunities to enhance their conservation and management. The Multi-objective Case Studies demonstrate approaches to account for the multiple management objectives of fishery production, coastal hazard mitigation, and biodiversity conservation to advance marine ecosystem-based management. These and other tools help us to transparently, flexibly and credibly consider the many objectives of marine ecosystem-based management. The Resources section includes all links and documents referred to within the text. Please send all comments and feedback on this toolkit to .