Using the Ecosystem Approach to Implement the Convention on Biological Diversity: Key Issues and Case Studies by R.D.Smith and E.Maltby. 2003. Published by IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. 118 pp
Reviewed by Barney Dickson

The Ecosystem Approach has been adopted by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity as the 'primary framework' for action taken under the Convention. However, its meaning and manner of implementation are difficult to pin down. This report, which is a contribution to the implementation of the CBD's Decision V/6 on the Ecosystem Approach, is a useful addition to the necessary work of elucidating the concept.

The report is the outcome of a project coordinated by Royal Holloway Institute for Environmental Research on behalf of IUCN CEM, UNESCO-MAB, the Ramsar Convention and WWF-International, with support from IUCN regional offices. The project included three regional workshops, and the report synthesises the lessons from the workshops under six headings. It has a chapter of recommendations and includes summaries of 26 case studies.

The most paradoxical point made in the report is that the Ecosystem Approach is not an ecosystems approach. What the authors mean by this is that the Ecosystem Approach is not a set of guidelines for the management of various ecosystems but 'a framework for thinking ecologically that results in action based on holistic decision-making'. One aspect of this holism is that the Ecosystems Approach places people, including their needs and socio-economic circumstances, at the centre of biodiversity management.

Another aspect of the holism is that the Ecosystem Approach is not designed only to be applied to protected areas, but can be extended to the 90 per cent of the planet that is outside protected areas. The report's penultimate chapter discusses the relationship between the Ecosystem Approach and other conservation strategies and this provides a helpful avenue for explicating the concept.

In this context, a key question concerns the relationship between the Ecosystem Approach and sustainable use. One way of understanding this relationship - suggested by this report - is that sustainable use should be placed within the broader framework of the Ecosystem Approach. This perspective invites a further question about the effects of placing sustainable use within this framework. The Ecosystem Approach might exert two sorts of influence. If there is a strong emphasis on keeping ecosystem functioning and structure intact and maintaining ecosystem resilience, then the effect is likely to be the imposition of additional constraints on sustainable use. On this view, the use of species must not only be sustainable at the population or species level, it must also not weaken the ecosystem in any way. This is likely to reduce the amount of use that can take place.

On the other hand, if the emphasis in the Ecosystem Approach is on maintaining certain ecosystem services and there is some redundancy at the species level in achieving this objective, then the effect of placing sustainable use within the Ecosystem Approach may be to loosen the constraints on use at the population or species level.

The working out of this dynamic between the Ecosystem Approach and sustainable use is just one of the ways that will contribute to the further elucidation of the Ecosystem Approach. This report provides an invaluable starting point for that overall enterprise.

Barney Dickson is Senior Policy and Research Officer at Fauna & Flora International and a member of the newly formed Global Sustainable Use Specialist Group.

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