GLOBEC-EUROCEANS-FAO Symposium "Coping with global change in marine social-ecological systems"
Rome, Italy, 8-10 July 2008

Marine ecosystem changes have impacts on, and consequences for, the human communities that depend on these systems, and how these human communities respond to these changes can have reciprocal impacts on marine ecosystems. These two highly inter-connected and interactive "ecological" (including physical-biological sub-systems) and "human" (including cultural, management, economic, and socio-political sub-systems) components are, however, usually studied independently from each other, and by different scientific disciplines with largely different scientific traditions ("natural" scientists; "social"` scientists and humanists).