A new paradigm for a transdisciplinary science of desertification

362 Diversity and Distributions , 11 , 361–366, © 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and temporal bounds, the authors endeavour assiduously to bring order to their treatment and presentation. They enlist the help of others as well. Aside from numerous tables and figures, the book is embedded with 21 boxes written by 25 different authors, on subjects ranging from the effects of noise pollution on dolphin behaviour to the definition of ecosystem management. A masterful text in conservation science is the result. Save the coastal realm, save nature: here is what you need to know. Coastal-marine conservation begins with an exhaustive review of subjects related to the challenge of stewardship in the coastal zone. Armed with this background, the reader is then immersed in three nicely contrasting case studies: the Chesapeake Bay, the Bering Sea and the Bahamas archipelago. The Chesapeake Bay, one of the world’s great estuaries, is situated on the eastern seaboard of a densely populated, heavily industrialized country, and suffers as a consequence of both. Stress in the system, we learn, can be monitored in terms of oysters — their health and abundance. In the Bering Sea, the relationship between walruses and sea ice is shown to be crucial to understanding the function of the ecosystem. And for the tropical Bahamas, with sovereignty over extensive, intrinsically diverse and aesthetically appealing coral reefs, we learn that the national economy is almost entirely dependent on the coastal realm. But unlike so many coastal-marine systems, the economic value of the Bahamian coastal zone is not related so much to a direct harvest of living resources as to its enjoyment by tourists, and to the revenue derived therefrom. The book goes on to address contemporary, very alarming circumstances in the coastal realm. Ray and McCormick-Ray dwell on the principle of ‘change’ in the greater ecosystem. They discuss several types of change — depleted fisheries, altered terrestrial drainage patterns, pollution — and stress that what is unique and threatening about these modern-day, humaninduced changes is their speed. The rate of degradation is growing. The rate of response, society’s efforts to conserve, restore or mitigate the damage, is not keeping pace with the losses. In a closing chapter entitled ‘Synthesis’, the authors discuss mechanisms that can be brought to bear on the dilemma in the coastal realm. Here, and elsewhere in the book, emphasis is placed on the role of science as a central component of any management campaign. Science, the ability to articulate quantitatively the state of the environment, and to document changes therein, is and will remain crucial to conservation and restoration. But the authors also speak of the need for a new outlook, for enlightenment among the human occupants of the coastal realm: ‘Human–environmental well-being will also depend on a new ethic’. Society’s move toward a ‘new ethic’ with respect to coastal-marine ecosystems may have been given a boost in September of 2003 at the fifth World Park Congress in Durban, South Africa. By the end of this 10-day event, the international conservation community had made more and grander pledges to save the seas than ever before. A specific commitment was made to establish a global network of representative marine and coastal protected areas. Scientific research was encouraged. Reform in fisheries management policy and practice was called for. If, as we hope, the Durban congress has heralded a new era in marine conservation for the world then Coastal-marine conservation: science and policy will surely become the handbook for its success. Release of this excellent volume could hardly be more opportune.