Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models—Evaluation, review and challenges for implementation

Abstract

Marine ecosystems evolve under many interconnected and area-specific pressures. To fulfil society's intensifying and diversifying needs while ensuring ecologically sustainable development, more effective marine spatial planning and broader-scope management of marine resources is necessary. Integrated ecological-economic fisheries models (IEEFMs) of marine systems are needed to evaluate impacts and sustainability of potential management actions and understand, and anticipate ecological, economic and social dynamics at a range of scales from local to national and regional. To make these models most effective, it is important to determine how model characteristics and methods of communicating results influence the model implementation, the nature of the advice that can be provided and the impact on decisions taken by managers. This article presents a global review and comparative evaluation of 35 IEEFMs applied to marine fisheries and marine ecosystem resources to identify the characteristics that determine their usefulness, effectiveness and implementation. The focus is on fully integrated models that allow for feedbacks between ecological and human processes although not all the models reviewed achieve that. Modellers must invest more time to make models user friendly and to participate in management fora where models and model results can be explained and discussed. Such involvement is beneficial to all parties, leading to improvement of models and more effective implementation of advice, but demands substantial resources which must be built into the governance process. It takes time to develop effective processes for using IEEFMs requiring a long-term commitment to integrating multidisciplinary modelling advice into management decision-making. K E Y W O R D Sbio-economic models, comparative model evaluation, fisheries management advice, integrated ecological-economic fisheries models, marine spatial planning and cross-sector management, performance criteria and scales and risks, use and acceptance and implementation and communication and flexibility and complexity | INTRODUCTIONThere is a growing need for tools to evaluate policies and assess tradeoffs in management of marine resources and provision of ecosystem services such as fishing, aquaculture, renewable energy, shipping, conservation and recreation (Cormier, Kannen, Elliott, & Hall, 2015;Degnbol & Wilson, 2008;EU 2014;Langlois, Fréon, Steyer, Delgenés, & Hélias, 2014;White et al., 2012). It is necessary to elaborate and apply common principles and broader, interdisciplinary management evaluation in the use of marine space involving several types of activities and sectors Soma et al., 2013;Stelzenmüller et al., 2013;Sundblad et al., 2014). Policymakers need to know the costs and benefits of conserving ecosystem goods and services to manage them sustainably. Moreover, according to an ecosystembased approach to management, specific pressures, associated uncertainties and risks need to be taken into account (Douvere, 2008;Ehler & Douvere, 2009;Gi...

Climate change alters fish community size‐structure, requiring adaptive policy targets

“…Size‐based models could therefore become a useful support to ecosystem assessment and fisheries management where size‐based indicators are already used, such as in the United States and Europe, and support their uptake in other regions of the globe. These and other ecosystem models based on mechanistic understanding (Nielsen et al., ) are also likely to be useful in data‐poor areas. For example, in Bangladesh, oceanographic surveys have only recently started but size‐spectrum models and SS‐DBEM have been applied to provide a first‐order, mechanistic assessment of the impacts of future climate change on fisheries, in support of fisheries management (Fernandes et al., ).…”

Integrating Economic dynamics into Ecological Networks: The case of fishery sustainability

“…Fisheries are an important example of natural-human integrated network systems given their critical role in the economic stability and food security of billions of people (12). Both the available yield and mobilized fishing effort in any fishery are products of a complex set of interacting socio-economic and ecological factors (13, 14). Understanding the dynamics and consequences of these interactions is particularly pressing as current management strategies have produced an over-exploitation crisis in a multitude of fisheries across the globe (15, 16), threatening both aquatic biodiversity (17) and the aforementioned food security (12).…”

“…While this bio-economic loop is understood in concept, limited work exists on its actual dynamics, especially in the context of broader ecological networks (27). We propose that attempts to understand and manage fishery dynamics must consider economic factors in the network as integrated ecological economic models (13). Otherwise, until more is known about the complex interactions between ecological and economic factors driving fishing efforts, policy makers risk attempting to optimize a process we poorly understand.…”

Measuring the bioeconomic impacts of prolonged drought on a lake ecosystem: The case of the Great Salt Lake, Utah

“…As the results of these particular empirical studies suggest, environmental regulation may foster negative welfare effects in a GE economy, similar to the simulated negative effect we find for the GSL bioeconomy for the case of fishery-specific regulation in the presence of prolonged drought. 6 For an exhaustive survey of PE bioeconomic models see Thunberg et al (2018). Good examples of studies cited therein include Knowler (2002), Thébaud et al (2014, and Guyader, Talidec, Macher, and Bertignac (2008).…”