Institutions matter: The need to address the institutional challenges of ecosystem management

As management philosophy focused on sustainability, ecosystem management calls for a reassessment of how we approach nature, science and politics. Implementation of ecosystem management will require changes in society's institutions. However, the exact requirements for institutional change are unclear. Therefore, in order to move toward implementing ecosystem management, a better understanding of the relationships between institutions and natural resource management will be required. The purpose of this paper is to examine institutional barriers and incentives to ecosystem management and to encourage a dialogue on this subject among resource managers, the public, and researchers. To this end, the paper identifies five problem areas where additional understanding of the institutional requirements for implementing ecosystem management is needed.