Good Environmental Status
How can EwE help assess and predict Good Environmental Status (GES) under the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, and what management strategies are most effective in achieving GES across multiple indicators?
The EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and its goal of achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) for all major ecosystems is an overarching policy for marine ecosystem management in Europe. This question can contribute to the scientific basis for implementing the MSFD, help prioritize management actions, and provide a tool for ongoing assessment and refinement of marine environmental policies in the EU and potentially elsewhere.
Using EwE to explore these aspects could provide insights for implementing the MSFD and support for achieving GES. The analyses could help:
- Develop and refine quantitative targets for GES descriptors
- Assess the current status and time-trends for marine ecosystems relative to GES
- Project future ecosystem states under different management scenarios
- Evaluate the effectiveness of proposed measures to achieve or maintain GES
- Identify potential conflicts or synergies between different GES objectives
- Inform management strategies by simulating ecosystem responses to interventions
Potential policy questions
- Indicator development: How can EwE outputs be used to develop and refine indicators for different GES descriptors (e.g., biodiversity, food webs, commercial fish stocks)?
- Baseline conditions: How can EwE help establish baseline conditions for GES indicators, accounting for historical ecosystem changes?
- Multi-criteria assessment: How can multiple GES descriptors be integrated into an overall assessment using EwE outputs?
- Scenario testing: What are the predicted outcomes of different management scenarios on GES indicators?
- Cumulative impacts: How do multiple stressors (e.g., fishing, pollution, climate change) interact to affect GES, and can EwE help prioritize management actions?
- Spatial considerations: How can Ecospace be used to assess GES at different scales (local, regional, basin-wide)?
- Temporal dynamics: What are the short-term versus long-term trajectories of GES indicators under different management strategies?
- Ecosystem service links: How do changes in GES indicators relate to changes in ecosystem service provision?
- Trophic level indicators: How can EwE’s representation of food web dynamics inform indicators of food web structure and function?
- Uncertainty analysis: How can uncertainty in EwE parameters and projections be incorporated into GES assessments?
- Regime shifts: Can EwE help identify potential tipping points or regime shifts that might affect the achievement of GES?
- Cross-border effects: How can EwE be used to assess transboundary effects and coordinate management actions across EU member states?
- Climate change scenarios: How might climate change impact the achievability of GES, and can EwE help design climate-adaptive management strategies?
- Economic coupling: Can the EwE value chain module be used to assess the socio-economic implications of achieving GES?
- Indicator sensitivity: Which GES indicators are most sensitive to management actions, and how can this inform prioritization of efforts?
- Recovery trajectories: For ecosystems currently below GES, what are the expected recovery trajectories under different management intensities?
- Trade-offs analysis: How can EwE help identify and quantify trade-offs between different GES descriptors or between ecological and socio-economic objectives?
- Data gaps: How can EwE be used to identify critical data gaps for assessing GES and guide future monitoring efforts?
