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Table 1 Environmental assessment in ecosystems versus in political Module
5
boundaries

Ecounit boundary Advantages
? More meaningful interpretation of environmental trends relevant to
specific ecosystems.

? Better understanding of ecosystems as functional units. Abu Dhabi, UAE
? Direct connection to ecosystem-scale policies.
? Focused research results and analysis..

Disadvantages
? Limited availability of some data expressed at the scale of ecounit
(particularly socio-economic data).
? Political complexity arising from analysis of resources under shared
jurisdiction.

Jurisdictional (political) Advantages
boundary
? More uniform regulatory environment.
? More simple data collection.
? Direct connection to jurisdiction-wide policies.

Disadvantages

? Resource-specific trends masked by data collected on the level of
political jurisdiction.
? Difficulty detecting differences in ecosystem impacts of specific
policies.

(Modified after Pintér, Zahedi and Cressman 2000)

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 13