ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the concept of the ecosystem approach can be used to render marine spatial planning (MSP) more sensitive to the relationality between human and environmental well-being. The chapter begins by unpacking the key tenets of the ecosystem approach to MSP under EU law. The analysis shows that the pertinent instruments are imbued by a rationalist ethics which contributes to the emergence of unjust patterns of human-ocean interaction in two ways: on the one hand, it promotes a reductive understanding of what counts as relevant and legitimate spatial knowledge; on the other hand, it triggers a radical rescaling of the institutional structures that underpin marine spatial planning, in the process altering the power relations between those engaging in, or benefitting from, different ocean uses. The chapter proceeds to demonstrate that the ecosystem approach under international biodiversity law is premised in a more holistic understanding of humanity’s relationship to the environment, and one that coheres with the kind of human rights-based approach conceptualised in the previous chapter. Accordingly, it can be relied upon to nurture meaningful linkages across knowledge systems and levels of decision-making, and, by extension, to promote context-sensitive, collaborative, and stewardly modes of MSP.
