Summary

Comparative Ocean Governance examines the world's attempts to improve ocean governance through place-based management - marine protected areas, ocean zoning, marine spatial planning - and evaluates this growing trend in light of the advent of climate change and its impacts on the seas.

This monograph opens with an explanation of the economics of the oceans and their value to the global environment and the earth's population, the long-term stressors that have impacted oceans, and the new threats to ocean sustainability that climate change poses. It then examines the international framework for ocean management and coastal nations' increasing adoption of place-based governance regimes. The final section explores how these place-based management regimes intersect with climate change adaptation efforts, either accidentally or intentionally. It then offers suggestions for making place-based marine management even more flexible and responsive for the future.

Environmental law scholars, legislators and policy makers, marine scientists, and all those concerned for the welfare of the world's oceans will find this book of great value.

Choice Review

Maintaining aesthetic, economic, and cultural uses of natural habitats is always challenging. It is most difficult where legal and political structures enabling management are only a few decades old and when the environmental context is shifting in unpredictable ways. Managing coastal and oceanic resources falls into this most difficult category because of historical traditions that view marine systems as common access and as a consequence of climate change effects. Craig (Univ. of Utah), an environmental law scholar, reviews the history of managing and governing coastal and oceanic systems after providing an extended abstract on historical and current stresses to these areas. She concludes with an extended section detailing emerging management philosophy and practices. The author's writing style is clear and remarkably lively, given the sometimes dry subject matter recounting the ontogeny of international law. The narrative content is accurate. However, readers must endure the extensive use of acronyms, a virtual absence of figures and tables, and literature-cited sections that rarely include the original studies underlying many concepts relevant to the subject, especially on ecological topics. Overall, the book is a good introduction to an emerging topic--managing natural systems as the climate changes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. S. R. Fegley University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill