Ecosystem science and the sustainable management of marine resources: from Rio to Johannesburg

At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, nations were asked to adopt new approaches for the protection and sustainable development of marine environments and resources. A decade later, overexploitation continues unabated. Scientists advocate the adoption of ecosystem-based management systems to curtail overexploitation, but we first need to improve our understanding of the functioning of marine ecosystems. If research in the past decade was successful in identifying ocean structures and patterns, particularly at the species level, in the coming years we should concentrate on understanding the functioning of entire ecosystems, moving from an age of exploitation to a new era of sustainability. This review is based on a presentation at the 2001 UNESCO-IOC Global Conference on Oceans and Coasts at the Johannesburg 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Rio + 10), aimed at providing a progress assessment on oceans and coasts in the 10 years since the Rio conference, identifying new and continuing challenges, and formulating recommendations for the oceans and coasts agenda of the Johannesburg summit.