Strong fisheries management and governance positively impact ecosystem status

Abstract

Fisheries have had major negative impacts on marine ecosystems, and effective fisheries management and governance are needed to achieve sustainable fisheries, biodiversity conservation goals and thus good ecosystem status. To date, the IndiSeas programme (Indicators for the Seas) has focussed on assessing the ecological impacts of fishing at the ecosystem scale using ecological indicators. Here, we , 2017, 18, 412-439 explore fisheries 'Management Effectiveness' and 'Governance Quality' and relate this to ecosystem health and status. We developed a dedicated expert survey, focused at the ecosystem level, with a series of questions addressing aspects of management and governance, from an ecosystem-based perspective, using objective and evidence-based criteria. The survey was completed by ecosystem experts (managers and scientists) and results analysed using ranking and multivariate methods. F I S H and F I S H E R I E SResults were further examined for selected ecosystems, using expert knowledge, to explore the overall findings in greater depth. Higher scores for 'Management Effectiveness' and 'Governance Quality' were significantly and positively related to ecosystems with better ecological status. Key factors that point to success in delivering fisheries and conservation objectives were as follows: the use of reference points for management, frequent review of stock assessments, whether Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) catches were being accounted for and addressed, and the inclusion of stakeholders. Additionally, we found that the implementation of a long-term management plan, including economic and social dimensions of fisheries in exploited ecosystems, was a key factor in successful, sustainable fisheries management. Our results support the thesis that good ecosystem-based management and governance, sustainable fisheries and healthy ecosystems go together.

Ecosystems say good management pays off

“…Of these drivers, EBFM should (by definition) be robust to the need to consider the interactions of all sectors (fisheries and otherwise) that impact the marine environment. However, the realization that this would not successfully address issues of governance of socioeconomic drivers has recently seen more emphasis on the human dimensions of EBFM (Anderson et al, 2015;Bundy et al, 2017;Charles, 2014;Urquhart, Acott, Reed, & Courtney, 2011).…”

Realistic fisheries management reforms could mitigate the impacts of climate change in most countries

“…Furthermore, achieving the benefits of climate-adaptive fisheries reform will require accounting for shifting productivity and distributions along a gradient of scientific, management, and enforcement capacities. Many countries lack the monitoring programs required to detect and describe shifts in distribution and productivity, the scientific capacity for conducting either climate-agnostic or climate-adaptive stock assessments, and the management capacity for setting and enforcing fisheries regulations [25,33,34]. This is frequently the case for the tropical developing countries that are forecast to experience the greatest losses in fisheries catch and profits under climate change and exhibit the greatest vulnerability to these reductions in food and income [35].…”

Lessons from the First Generation of Marine Ecological Forecast Products

“…Incorporating behavior, allowing for adaptive responses, and modeling organisms in terms of their full life-cycle are all key elements that can be expected to be seen in the next generation of models and deliver gains in predictive skill, challenges in parameterising such models notwithstanding (Urban et al, 2016). Similarly, the importance of social science in understanding the marine system is gaining increasing recognition and can be expected to drive important modeling developments in the future as well as to inform the features that make a management system effective (Fulton, 2010;Bundy et al, 2017).…”