The Nature Conservancy Congratulates President Obama on Oceans Policy Executive Order
Order calls upon government to look at ocean uses holistically, instead of piece-by-piece.
ARLINGTON, VA — The Nature Conservancy congratulates President Obama for his bold executive order Monday that sets forth a new and more effective way of managing our oceans for people and nature.
The order creates a national policy for ocean stewardship and directs the federal government to make regional plans for ocean and coastal resources and the Great Lakes. It also directs federal agencies with a stake in ocean resources to come up with a comprehensive approach to implement the plans, making for more efficient government.
“The Gulf oil spill makes us all acutely aware of the importance and the vulnerability of our marine and coastal resources,” said Mark Tercek, The Nature Conservancy President and CEO. “For almost a decade we have been actively engaged in getting to this historic point, and today the nation is one big step closer to managing our ocean’s resources in a sustainable way that benefits people and nature.”
In Washington state, the Legislature during the recent session passed a Marine Waters Planning and Management law with the leadership of Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-San Juan, that protects marine ecosystems in Puget Sound, Juan de Fuca Strait, the outer coast and the open ocean and reduces user conflicts by establishing a state interagency planning process. This new legislation will enable Washington to apply for federal funds for marine spatial planning and related issues such as seafloor mapping, data collection and science.
On any given day in the ocean, commuter ferries, harbor police, sailboats, trawlers, tuna boats, Navy and Coast Guard vessels, whale watching cruises, fishing boats, giant freighters and tankers all vie for space. The scene gets even more crowded with the addition of offshore energy, aquaculture, underwater cables and a host of other ocean activities. These uses affect each other as well as the ocean itself.
The executive order’s bold new approach for managing these uses is called coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP). Much like land-use planning, CMSP uses science to paint a picture of how the ocean can support multiple human activities, marine life and natural resources. This blueprint provides the information needed to help accommodate ocean uses and minimize conflicts, while ensuring the health of ocean ecosystems.
The executive order is also an important step in untangling the web of federal agencies that oversee dozens of different and often conflicting laws, by adding state participation to the governance of marine areas, and creating a substantially enhanced level of collaboration that requires the agencies to think more comprehensively instead of one ocean use at a time.
The Nature Conservancy is on the front lines supporting these efforts, working with fishermen, government officials, industry and scientists to share our experience, policy expertise and our data to help advance coordinated planning.
Around the country, many states are already engaged in ocean planning or forming regional ocean partnerships. The Natural Resources Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation last week to codify a similar spatial planning process.
This policy is the culmination of a year long process that started when the President convened the Ocean Policy Task Force in June of 2009. The Task Force drew on the conclusions of two separate blue ribbon panels and started a process that included six listening sessions across the nation, hundreds of meetings with stakeholders and ocean user groups, two public comment periods and thousands of comments from citizens and ocean users around the country.
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The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 18 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 117 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.
Contact
Jill Austin, 321-689-6099, jaustin@tnc.org
The Nature Conservancy
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