Dr Gerjan Piet of WMR (Wageningen UR) has been working for some 25 years on the development of the knowledge base to support environmental assessments and ecosystem-based management of maritime activities aimed at a sustainable exploitation of the marine environment. He is the author of more than 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has participated in and coordinated several EU-funded projects that involve operationalizing policy, indicators, environmental risk assessments, sustainable exploitation and the development of management strategies and their evaluation (e.g. EFEP, MEFEPO, INDECO, INDENT, MAFCONS, IMAGE, MEECE, ODEMM, AQUACROSS). He is a member of the European Topic Centre on inland, coastal and marine waters (ETC-ICM) of the European Environment Agency (EEA) and member or (has been) chair of several STECF and ICES working groups, all aimed at developing the knowledge base to support various marine conventions with sustainability at their core, including the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the EU Biodiversity Strategy, Common Fisheries Policy and Birds and Habitat Directives. His expertise revolves around the issue of sustainable exploitation of the marine environment spanning the whole breadth from data collection, indicator development and application, environmental- / cumulative effects assessments and operational integrated ecosystem-based management of maritime activities.