Executive summary

Our oceans support life and unite communities in a profound way and yet, face more threats today than ever before in history. They are in declining health due to an increasing footprint of human use and climate change, and despite increased global action in recent years to protect the ocean, the scale is simply not sufficient (Laffoley et al., 2020). The United Nations’ IPCC urgent call for action in 2018, to address climate change gave rise to a growing climate emergency movement. Both the Welsh Government and UK Parliament responded with a Climate Emergency declaration in 2019. This was followed by a landmark report published by the Intergovernmental Science- Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019) that declared a “Nature Emergency” with the urgent need to protect and restore nature and it’s vital contributions to society. The overarching objectives of this review were to:

1. Provide NRW/Welsh Government (UK) with a better understanding of the concept and mechanics of marine resilience to support effective resilience-based management of marine ecosystems.

2. Review current approaches for assessing ecosystem resilience in Wales, including marine programmes currently contributing to resilience assessment.

3. Explore opportunities for enhancing marine resilience in Wales to build sustainable marine ecosystems.