The UNEP Large Marine Ecosystems report

This report is a result of a collaborative effort to promote a global view of conditions within LMEs across the North-South divide. It was generously coordinated by UNEP Regional Seas Programme, and the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA Coordination Office) in The Hague, Netherlands. In summer 2005 it was agreed that UNEP, in partnership with the GEF supported Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA) project, and NOAA’s Large Marine Ecosystem Program, would provide synopses of ecological conditions for each of the worlds’ Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs). In accordance with the outcome of a series of consultations among the three parties, it was concluded that the five-module LME assessment framework of productivity, fish and fisheries, pollution and ecosystem health, socioeconomics, and governance, would provide a useful basis for describing ecological conditions within the world’s LMEs.