Ecological sustainability in context – exploring geographic, institutional and cultural influences

Keywords: Ecosystem management; ecosystem governance; ecological sustainability, small island developing states
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Ecosystem management (EM) is recognized as a discipline requiring more place-based and context specific approaches that acknowledge all types of knowledge (scientific, tradition, Indigenous), respect various cultural and institutional settings, and are more inclusive, leading to improved ecosystem governance approaches. It is in this context that we conduct an examination of two very different countries, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) to highlight underlying factors which make overarching sustainable goals a challenge and which particularly impede the adoption of EM strategies by Small Island Developing States (SIDS). From the literature and conducted research in these two nations, noteworthy context-based issues can be categorized under scale, development, and governance. Canada and T&T provide examples of contrasting geographical scales (large-scale continental vs small island), economies (advanced vs developing), and approaches to governance (decentralized vs centralized). In this regard, we utilize these case studies to first discuss the three issues of scale, development and governance and their influence on EM and then through the analysis of the case studies, extract potential considerations for furthering the work on EM, with a special focus on SIDS.