Scale mismatches: Old friends and new seascapes in a planning regime

In this chapter, the authors utilise Driver State Welfare Response (DPSWR) as a framework to identify scale mismatches in three marine spatial planning (MSP) case studies: the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Massachusetts Ocean Plan in the United States of America, and Scotland's Marine Plan in the United Kingdom. In applying DPSWR, they additionally incorporate a modified version of the classification of scale mismatches introduced by O'Higgins et al. In its original design, this classification identified two types of mismatch based on their scale relative to the spatially fixed scale of legislative Response. Two types of mismatches are: 'Extent' mismatches and 'Grain' mismatches. After briefly presenting these cases, and identifying the mismatches within the DPSWR framework, they discuss the commonalities among these cases, and conclude by making several recommendations to policy-makers and researchers in the broader field of ecosystem-based management.