Reconciling food security, economic development and biodiversity conservation is a key challenge, especially in the face of the demographic transition characterizing many countries in the world. Fisheries and marine ecosystems constitute a difficult application of this bio‐economic challenge. Many experts and scientists advocate an ecosystem approach to manage marine socio‐ecosystems for their sustainability and resilience. However, the ways by which to operationalize ecosystem‐based fisheries management (EBFM) remain poorly specified. We propose a specific methodological framework—viability modelling—to do so. We show how viability modelling can be applied using four contrasted case‐studies: two small‐scale fisheries in South America and Pacific and two larger‐scale fisheries in Europe and Australia. The four fisheries are analysed using the same modelling framework, structured around a set of common methods, indicators and scenarios. The calibrated models are dynamic, multispecies and multifleet and account for various sources of uncertainty. A multicriteria evaluation is used to assess the scenarios’ outcomes over a long time horizon with different constraints based on ecological, social and economic reference points. Results show to what extent the bio‐economic and ecosystem risks associated with the adoption of status quo strategies are relatively high and challenge the implementation of EBFM. In contrast, strategies called ecoviability or co‐viability strategies, that aim at satisfying the viability constraints, reduce significantly these ecological and economic risks and promote EBFM. The gains associated with those ecoviability strategies, however, decrease with the intensity of regulations imposed on these fisheries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the environmental nature of the French Guiana shrimp fishery dynamics through an empirical analysis. To do so, we specify a global harvest production function, in which the output depends on the number of days at sea and the stock level. In addition, we use some environmental variables representing the 'El Niño' and 'la Niña' phenomena, the sea surface temperature, and the flow of some Amazonian rivers as instruments. This method enables us to correct the well-known simultaneous bias between the harvest and the stock levels and to show that harvest is significantly dependent on the environmental factors analyzed, which may compromise the future of the French Guiana shrimp fishery in the context of climate change.

Marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and fisheries are under strain worldwide due to global changes including climate warming and demographic pressure. To address this issue, many scientists and stakeholders advocate the use of an ecosystem approach for fisheries that integrates the numerous ecological and economic complexities at play rather than focusing on the management of individual target species. However, the operationalization of such an ecosystem approach remains challenging, especially from a bio-economic standpoint. Here, to address this issue, we propose a model of intermediate complexity (MICE) relying on multi-species, multi-fleet, and resource-based dynamics. Climate change effects are incorporated through an envelope model for the biological growth of fish species as a function of sea surface temperature. The model is calibrated for the small-scale fishery in French Guiana using a time series of fish landings and fishing effort from 2006 to 2018. From the calibrated model, a predictive fishing effort projection and RCP climate scenarios derived from IPCC, we explore the ecosystem dynamics and the fishery production at the horizon 2100. Our results demonstrate the long-term detrimental impact of both climate change and ecological competition on fish biodiversity. The prognosis is particularly catastrophic under the most pessimistic climate scenario, with a potential collapse of both biomass targeted species and fishing activity by 2100.