Strengthening Institutions for Stakeholder Involvement and Ecosystem-Based Management in the US Arctic Offshore

" The nation's current approach to managing the use of ocean resources is ad hoc and fragmented, with no systematic way to evaluate competing ocean uses and to inform and navigate the often difficult trade-off decisions they require. The nation needs a 'comprehensive, integrated, ecosystem-based' framework for coastal and marine spatial planning that " addresses conserva-T he dramatic run-up in oil prices between 2001 and 2008 fu-eled keen interest in oil and gas exploration worldwide. In Alaska, observers were startled by record-breaking bids total-ing more than $2.6 billion for leases offered by the US Minerals Management Service (MMS) in a remote area of the Chukchi Sea. Shell Offshore Inc., which paid $2.1 billion for Chukchi leases, was eager to begin exploration activities both in the Chukchi and in the Beaufort Sea, where it is also a major lease holder. While federal agencies approved Shell's 2008 plan for exploration in the Beaufort (and state agencies concurred), no drilling occurred because of a legal challenge asserting that the environmental review process did not adequately consider potential for harm to migrating whales and traditional Iñupiaq hunting (Alaska Wilderness League v. Kempthorne, November 2008). 458 north by 2020: perspectives on alaska's changing social-ecological systems This is the latest example of failed ocean governance strategies in a thirty-year history of conflict over oil and gas development in offshore northern Alaska. The conflicts of interest among surface users (Iñupiaq subsistence hunters), subsurface owners (the state and federal governments that own the oil and gas rights), and the oil industry that wants to develop the resource is structural. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that marine ecosystems in many parts of the world have been transformed by the loss of biodiversity, over-fishing, food web collapses, marine pollution, and ill-planned coastal development These transformations are largely understood to stem from failures of governance (Crowder et al. 2006). At present, the governance systems managing human uses of the marine environment are fragmented along agency and jurisdic-tional lines; additionally, existing governance strategies are often not aligned with spatial and temporal characteristics of the marine system (Crowder et al. 2006). In this chapter, we argue that as changing conditions in both the human and natural environments of the Alaska arctic offshore spotlight shortcomings in the existing management regimes, the time has come to rethink and redesign the fragmented array of institutions governing resource use in the region. The …