Lisbon, Portugal, 2009

Charles N. Ehler

is the President of Ocean Visions, an international, integrated coastal and ocean management consulting company, based in Paris, France, specializing in expert advice on strategic planning, assessment, and program evaluation to national governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations.  He is an internationally recognized expert on integrated coastal and ocean management, and has specialized for the past seven years in marine spatial planning.

Since 2005 he has been a consultant to UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and Man and the Biosphere Programme, Division of Ecological and Earth Sciences, UNEP’s Regional Seas Programme, the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), IUCN’s Marine Programme, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the International Ocean Institute, WWF-International, WWF-Sweden, and the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Climate Change and the Arctic.

He worked as a senior executive for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the ocean agency of the USA, for 27 years from 1978-2005, where he was the Director of the International Program Office of the National Ocean Service from 1998-2005 and managed the US Coastal Zone Management Program from 2000-2003.  For 15 years (1983-98) he was responsible for most of NOAA’s marine pollution programs, including oil spill response, natural resource damage assessment, marine and coastal environmental monitoring, strategic environmental assessment, and physical oceanography.  Following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, he helped organize and directed NOAA’s Exxon Valdez Damage Assessment Office, the first natural resource damage assessment office in the world.  He organized and directed the Office of Ocean Resources Coordination and Assessment (ORCA) from 1978-83.

From 1973-78, he worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, implementing research programs on integrated regional environmental management and the use of economic incentives for pollution management.  Prior to his government service, he taught regional planning and natural resources management at the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968-73.  He is the author of over 90 publications on integrated coastal and ocean management and marine spatial planning.  He is a graduate of the University of Michigan (regional planning and natural resources management) and the Pennsylvania State University (architecture).

From 2000-2005, he was the Vice-Chair (Marine) of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Area—the largest international organization of governmental and non-governmental protected area specialists in the world, and in 2003 co-chaired the Marine Program of the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa.  He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group on Coastal Zones and Small Islands from 1992-1998 and in 2007 was recognized by the International Meteorological Organization for his contribution to the IPCC in its award of the Nobel Peace Prize.   He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands, and an original member of the Religious and Scientific Committee from 1994-2007, advising the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox Christian Church on a series of six symposia that examined the relationship among religion, science, and the environment.  He was also a member of the Ocean Zoning Working Group of the Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara from 2005-2006, and an Associate Editor of the international journal, Ocean and Coastal Management, from 2003-2008.