Chapter 6: Integrating and Resolving Ocean Management Issues

CHAPTER 6: INTEGRATING AND RESOLVING OCEAN MANAGEMENT ISSUES

The analyses and recommendations of the previous chapters identify the need to achieve three important management objectives:

Enhance the opportunities for environmentally sound, sustainable, and economically beneficial ocean-dependent industries.

Increase consideration of habitat and resource zone interdependence within California's ocean ecosystem.

Make the current legal and jurisdictional regime for managing California's ocean ecosystem more coherent, efficient, and effective.

ACHIEVING GOALS: ACCOUNTABILITY AND COORDINATION

Attaining these objectives, however, is complicated by multiple agencies of jurisdiction, each with respective mandates and responsibilities that are sometimes conflicting and other times duplicative. What is self-evident to even a casual observer is the need to simplify and bring more cohesiveness to ocean management. This task is best accomplished by those entities involved in the day-to-day management of California's ocean resources. For these reasons, effective ocean resource management and implementation of the priorities identified in this Agenda would be enhanced by increased coordination efforts at the State level.

Recommendation:: Convene a State cabinet-level ocean resources management coordinating council, composed of agency and department directors with ocean resource management responsibilities, to help integrate the multiple agencies and programs of ocean and coastal jurisdiction.

This council would provide a cabinet-level forum intended to formulate comprehensive consensus-based approaches for resolving California ocean resource management issues. Only the most important and controversial ocean management issues should be raised to the level of the council. It should meet on a regular basis and seek the advice and recommendations of the interested public, private, or governmental parties ("stakeholders") who work with these issues on a regular basis, but final decision-making authority would reside with the inter-agency members and their respective departments, boards and commissions. This process will provide the regular communication link necessary for these agencies to form a cohesive system of ocean management for California.

The council should be chaired by the Secretary for Resources, consistent with the authority vested with the Resources Agency as the lead for ocean resource management issues (Assembly Bill 205,

California's Ocean Resources: An Agenda for the Future Chapter 6: Integrating and Resolving Managment Issues
The Resources Agency of California July 1995 (Draft)

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Chapter 1027, Stats. 1991). Council meetings should occur quarterly, or more often as necessary, and should include the following agencies and departments:

Resources Agency of California
- Office of the Secretary
- California Coastal Commission
- Department of Boating and Waterways
- Department of Conservation
- Department of Fish and Game
- Department of Parks and Recreation
- Department of Water Resources
- Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response
- San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission
- State Coastal Conservancy
- State Lands Commission
California Environmental Protection Agency
- Office of the Secretary
- State Water Resources Control Board
Other Agencies
- California Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency
- California Trade and Commerce Agency
- Department of Health Services, California Health and Welfare Agency
- Intergovernmental Affairs, Governor's Office of Planning and Research

Success will depend, in part, upon the commitment of member agencies and departments to actively participate in achieving consensus-based solutions. But, success is also conditional on a commitment by the federal agencies of jurisdiction, local governments, and affected stakeholders to participate in a like manner. Ultimately, true coordination and integration of public policy can only be achieved with universal participation. A State coordinating council is therefore not the final answer, but it is a critical first step.

California's Ocean Resources: An Agenda for the Future Chapter 6: Integrating and Resolving Managment Issues
The Resources Agency of California July 1995 (Draft)

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