Myth: Conservation is not a productive use of ocean and coastal lands and resources.
Fact: Ecosystem services are being recognized as legitimate uses of the marine environment.
Many traditional management programs placed productive use conditions on the private occupation of public lands within ocean and coastal waters. Productive uses of ocean and coastal lands often included requirements to harvest, cultivate, or extract resources, to take resources to the market, or to create direct financial returns from the use of the property. More recently, these traditional concepts of productive uses have been challenged and examined to allow for broader interpretations that include the conservation of environmental services.
- Perceived use requirements: In some cases, perceived productive use requirements are actually historical practices and long-held perceptions, as opposed to real requirements spelled out in laws, regulations, or policies. Specific laws, regulations, and policies that address activities in the marine environment must be carefully assessed to determine real versus perceived use requirements. For example, aquaculture laws frequently require cultivation of shellfish, but upon reading the definitions of cultivation, restoration and protection activities (without subsequent harvest) may easily qualify.
- Rethinking use: Because there is a long tradition of resource extraction and harvest in the marine environment, it is often thought that these types of activities constitute a use and other activities do not. But concepts and definitions of use must be rethought. [It is rare, even undocumented to-date, that the term use is actually defined in law, regulation, or policy.] Functionally, areas (including areas of the oceans and coasts) are in use when other uses are prevented (in part or in whole) from occurring in the same locations. For example, if the ocean bed is occupied by a utility line, that exact area of occupation cannot be used by another utility line, aquaculture operation, or dredged shipping lane (activities which may be incompatible with the original utility line). In the same line of reasoning, if an area of the ocean is protected in its natural state, that same area cannot be occupied by other uses that may be incompatible with the natural conditions of the site, such as dredge material disposal, trawl fishing, or marinas.
- Ecosystem services identification: Increasingly, ecosystem services (such as carbon sequestration, water purification and supply, flood mitigation, recreation and tourism) are being identified, quantified, and valued for specific habitats, including habitats within ocean and coastal waters. The identification, quantification, and valuation of ecosystem services allow them to be bought and sold similar to other natural resources (see the Katoomba Group). If interests in ecosystem services can be sold by owners of the services and bought by conservation organizations, which subsequently allows the services to be protected to the exclusion of other uses and activities, then protection of the services (i.e., conservation) is a use.
- Ecosystem services support other uses: Without the full complement of healthy and bountiful ocean and coastal ecosystem services, other uses within the marine environment could not exist. For example, aquaculture activities require a clean supply of water, fishing requires a constant supply of fish, navigation requires unfettered waterways, and recreational SCUBA requires interesting underwater sites. These other, more traditional uses rely on the conservation of ecosystem services as a legitimate use of the marine environment.
