Delivering research that is valuable for policy-making requires expanded interdisciplinary efforts to support governance. This theme session explores paths to better include the human dimension in marine research and governance. The topics will be organized in two complementary streams: 1) how to do interdisciplinary science to manage marine social-ecological systems; 2) how to utilize different approaches to the governance of marine social-ecological systems, including competing uses by multiple sectors of interconnected ecosystems components.

We welcome papers on methodological approaches, conceptual frameworks, comparative analyses, case studies, and critical reviews intended to advance a roadmap for effective collaboration and management-relevant research.

Sustainable Ocean Development is of global significance and is experiencing increased interest due to the recognition of its importance to address key global challenges and its everlasting importance to humankind. To ensure future sustainability, it is necessary to focus on what was achieved, where we are going, and what challenges we will face including the role that local and global actors play. This session will examine factors and perspectives for sustainable ocean use and development including the lessons learned from the past to inform the future. Sub-sessions will focus on community involvement, user rights, capital concentration and distribution of resources and returns.

Integrated actions are needed to address the many pressures impacting marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. Resource managers are increasingly required to assess the cumulative risk of these pressures; however, public perception of risk often deviates from technical assessments. Managers thus face a dilemma: if they base their policies on technical assessments alone, they may lose public support; if they use only the perceptions as guidance, they may spend resources dedicated to risk reduction unwisely. Our highly interactive session will explore risk assessment and perception across a range of topics including climate, habitat, fishing communities, among others.

Marine socio-ecological systems provide benefits to society. As scientists develop spatial analyses of marine ecosystems and associated benefits, demand for diverse socioeconomic data expands, alongside the emphasis on integration of socioeconomic and ecological data. We highlight the intersection of spatial approaches and socioeconomic data in integrated ecosystem assessments, describe their integration with ecological data, outline and address challenges in socioeconomic data collection and integration, discuss marine environmental carrying capacity and the suitability of spatial development, identify the ways in which natural resources restrict development in marine spatial planning and provide dialogue opportunities on future spatial marine research and policy efforts.

Marine Ecosystem Services(MES) which link ecosystem state and human well-being are one of the most important languages of social-ecological systems thinking. In theory, MES are a vital component of Ecosystem-Based Management underpinning sustainable Blue Economic growth. In practice, large-scale assessment of ecosystem services concepts in sea and ocean are generally limited to the supply side and critically, lack consideration of human demand. This is particularly true for cultural services. This session, therefore, welcomes quantitative and qualitative contributions from any discipline which help to incorporate cultural services into marine governance and regional economic development. In particular, we encourage the utilization of some boundary objects (maps, games, etc.) which can contribute to the visualization of cultural services.

Complexity in marine social-ecological systems presents challenges for achieving balance between ecological sustainability and the needs and desires of resource users. Inter- and transdisciplinary research methods provide the opportunity to integrate diverse perspectives and to engage stakeholders to foment the co-production of knowledge and visions to inform decision-making. This session provides case studies of innovative use of interdisciplinary and participatory methods, applied at various scales to inform fisheries and other global ecosystem challenges. We seek to understand best practices in converting co-production of knowledge to management relevance. A panel will discuss the lessons learned for the design of SES projects and for the sustainability of marine ecosystems.

Assessing the overall status or trends of biodiversity and ecosystems is increasingly required as part of reporting progress towards national and international policy goals. Such assessments often require the integration of indicators across multiple biodiversity features and can cover the effects from a range of human activities for large areas of ocean. The evidence used in these assessments may be collected at different geographic scales and come from multiple knowledge systems. This session welcomes presentations on qualitative and quantitative multi-scale approaches to biodiversity ecosystem assessments, including indicator development, integration methods, and baseline and target setting approaches, and how they can be used to assess ecosystem services and improve conservation measures.

Applying a “lens” of coastal communities, this session will use presentations and facilitated discussions to explore how change, conflict, climate, poverty and food security, and integrated assessment, interact in the context of coastal communities.

Coastal Communities and Change: #1. Land Use. Driving forces behind change of land use in coastal zones and its impact on socio-ecological systems.

Coastal Communities and Change. #2. Values. Charting changing coastal uses, values and preferences, and implications for trade-offs, cooperation and conflict in the coastal zone.

Coastal Communities and Change. #3. Climate and Human Development. Exploring the challenge of developing integrated responses to deal together with (a) changing climate and (b) the changing nature of livelihoods, economies, poverty and food security in coastal communities.

Coastal Communities and Change. #4. Integrated Assessment. Participatory discussion session on innovative monitoring of change in ocean uses, using coastal communities as units of analysis within multi-sectoral integrated assessment.

Marine systems are vulnerable to environmental variability, intensifying climate change and increasing human pressures, such as over-exploitation, pollution and ocean acidification. These can have severe consequences for marine organisms, ecosystem services and their users. When the adaptive capacities of marine ecosystems or user groups and communities are exceeded, unexpected tipping points can be reached.

We invite case studies and methodologies that address the internal variability, responses to external drivers, and users’ adaptive capacities in marine social-ecological systems (SES). By improving understanding of the vulnerability to combined drivers, we aim to identify adaptive governance strategies that can strengthen the resilience of marine-human systems under global change.

Research is increasingly adopting interdisciplinary and applied approaches to address complex marine and coastal issues. This session draws on a range of experiences of interdisciplinary training, research, and leadership related to marine SES across the globe, asking: What are the conditions that make these approaches successful? What are some practical techniques for integrated research? Can such an approach generate implementable solutions and also provide researchers with academic credit and future opportunities? What are funders looking for in interdisciplinary proposals?