Working Group 41 on Marine Ecosystem Services (MES)

He explained that the meeting will take place over two days, with Day 1 dedicated primarily to final progress updates on the Working Group projects and Day 2 focusing on next steps towards finishing the projects and producing outputs (PICES Press article and PICES Scientific Report et al.) and discussing the future for MES and the Working Group generally. [...] This project is intended to address terms of reference #1, #2, and #3 by assessing the scope of MES available in the North Pacific, reviewing the methods for assessing MES along the ecological, economic, and sociocultural dimensions, and a case study of the application of methods for assessing aquaculture-related MES in the North Pacific member countries. [...] Lew also provided an update on the status of the introduction to the fourth section and the Section 4 economic assessment subsection. [...] The positives included: learning more about MES and different countries’ perspectives and experiences, the effort some of the WG members and contributors made to make progress on the WG projects, and the relationships that were developed that will hopefully be ones that lead to future collaborations. [...] WG 41 6 WG 41 – 2021 Some of the identified challenges included: the difficulties in getting the group organized and its membership filled by appropriate and willing members from the PICES nations, the often-slow progress made even more difficult by the pandemic and unforeseen setbacks, and some persistent challenges due to language differences that made communicating sometimes difficult.