The aim of this work package will be to create an efficient interdisciplinary platform to synthesise and make available policy-relevant knowledge and decision support tools. The vocation of this platform will be to help practitioners during their decision-making process to assess alternative and balanced MSP and governance options, their pertinence with respect to policy targets, their possible combinations, and their impacts on the environment and human communities to facilitate their decision-making process.

• An Internet platform will organise and provide access to a wide range of knowledge relevant to tropical MSP (Task 5.1).
• A toolbox of Decision Support Tools (DST; e.g. Center for Ocean Solutions, 2011) will be selected (Task 5.2)...
• And tested in a few study regions and alternative policy strategies (Task 5.3).
• Links between the PADDLE collaborative platform and other networks will be one way to ensure the self-sustainability of the partnership after the end of the project (Task 5.4).

In particular, this DST toolbox will particularly account for (i) the dynamic nature of socio-ecological systems and the opportunities offered by dynamic ocean management tools; (ii) the specificities of tropical regions (a rich biodiversity-based resilience, a serious risk of ‘ocean grabbing’); and (iii) the need to avoid or at least reduce environmental damage before compensating when selecting human development options in the oceans. To this end, PADDLE will make a special effort to explore DST tools which account for ecosystem processes in their broadest ecological and socio-economic dimensions and not only through the monetization of the services they provide to humans.

Please find a tentative bibliography for this workpackage through this link.

Please find the related data library through this link, last updated on June 17th, 2019.