Toolkits will cover the following priority topics: 

Stakeholder Participation in Environmental Policy Toolkit

Environmental policy and management only succeed if key stakeholders feel engaged and have bought into the design of the actions concerned. The Toolkit for Stakeholder Participation in Environmental Policy (in further text: Toolkit) provides practical guidance on how to achieve this, focusing on the Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) projects, which seek to advance ecosystem-based management approach and action in five modules: productivity, fish and fisheries, pollution and ecosystem health, socioeconomics, and governance.

Large Marine Ecosystems Strategic Approach Toolkit

The toolkit is intended to create a legacy impact for the GEF International Waters LME Portfolio as well as other international partners, maximizing the effectiveness of the GEF IW investments and increasing the use of ecosystem-based management approaches in marine and coastal environments around the world. This toolkit has been developed for LME practitioners, large-scale marine and coastal management project specialists, LME technical advisors and others developing GEF or non-GEF national or multinational marine and coastal projects. It provides a practical approach for the development planning of large scale projects in LMEs.

The purpose of the toolkit is to describe the strategic approach to designing an LME project, incorporating an updated 5-module ecosystem approach, and the TDA/SAP process, as well as complementary tools such as ICM, MSP, the Ecosystem Based Approach to Fisheries across multiple scales, the development of MPA networks and fisheries refugia as well as climate change concerns.

Large Marine Ecosystems Governance Toolkit

The Large Marine Ecosystems Governance Toolkit (in further text : Governance Toolkit) provides an introduction into governance concepts relevant for Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) practitioners. The Governance Toolkit aims to offer the GEF LME: LEARN project leads and partners a practical resource on governance approaches and lessons learned from GEF LME: LEARN projects and other initiatives. It aims to promote an integrated, collaborative approach to ocean and coastal management and is part of a larger LME Toolkit series that provides information and tools on other critical issues for LME management.

Environmental Economics for Marine Ecosystem Management Toolkit

The purpose of this toolkit is to show how environmental economic methods can be used to produce information to support decision-making in the context of LME, MPA, ICM, Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) and climate change adaptation. Specifically, it is designed to help a broad audience of practitioners, managers, government officials, private sector managers, NGOs, and statisticians to understand the available environmental economic tools and how the information generated can be used to inform the decisions that they make.

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) Toolkit

This report presents the content of a web-based toolkit on marine spatial planning (MSP) for Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) practitioners as part of the LME:LEARN project. The MSP toolkit provides MSP practitioners with practical guidance, examples of tools and methods that are necessary for designing and carrying out the MSP process in an LME context.

In an LME context MSP is still a fairly new concept and most of the ongoing projects and initiatives are the first to start a transboundary MSP. The toolkit draws on existing LME MSP experiences as well as other transnational MSP practices applicable in an LME context to provide guidance to those who intend to or are already involved in an LME MSP initiative.

As part of the larger set of LME toolkits, it shares the aim of promoting an integrated, collaborative approach to coastal and ocean management. It is organised according to the general components of an MSP process, and highlights specific aspects which have to be taken into account during a transboundary MSP process. The toolkit provides examples of relevant tools and approaches, which can aid those involved in such a process to implement specific steps in the best possible way.

LME Scorecard

The Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) Management Effectiveness Scorecard provides LME managers and stakeholders with a tool to quickly evaluate management effectiveness to help improve decision making in LME implementation. Its goal is to provide LME managers and stakeholders with a dynamic approach for assessing their management performance against conservation and sustainable use standards, anchored on ecosystem-based management principles. The tool is tailored to relate with the ecological, governance, and social context of LMEs. The tool can be applied both at national, subnational scales, and at LME level, allowing the tool to provide a regional vision for effective management according to regional and national goals. 

LME Project Cycle Toolkit

The purpose of this Toolkit is to provide a Step by Step document to guide the preparation of LME Project Documents. It utilizes the experiences gained and definitions/formats used in a growing body of GEF funded LME projects. Focus is on Preparation of LME Project Docs and linkages are established with other Tool Kits on LME Approach, Stakeholder Analysis, Economic Valuation and Governance among others.