Abstract
AbstractFisheries management aims to ensure that the fishing activities are environmentally sustainable in the long term, while also achieving the economic, social and food security related management objectives. To facilitate this, both the ecological and human dimensions of sustainability need to be included in fisheries assessment. In addition, assessing long‐term sustainability calls for taking into account plausible changes in the surrounding societal conditions that shape the characteristics of the fisheries governance system, as well as the ecological conditions. The paper uses a combination of qualitative exploratory scenario storylines (ESS) and Bayesian belief networks (BBN) to integrate the environmental, economic, social and food security dimensions in an interdisciplinary assessment of the future sustainability of Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras, Clupeidae) and salmon (Salmo salar, Salmonidae) fisheries. First, four alternative ESS were created based on plausible changes in societal drivers. The ESS were then formulated into a BBN to (a) visualize the assumed causalities, and (b) examine quantitatively how changes in the societal drivers affect the social‐ecological fisheries system and ultimately the fisheries management objectives. This type of probabilistic scenario synthesis can help in thinking qualitative scenarios in a quantitative way. Moreover, it can increase understanding on the causal links between societal driving forces and the complex fisheries system and on how the management objectives can be achieved, thereby providing valuable information for strategic decision‐making under uncertainty.
Highlights
The EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) aims to ensure long-term environmental, economic and social sustainability of fishing activities (European Commission, 2013)
Long-term sustainability assessment requires that in addition to environmental changes, such as those caused by climate change, changes in the surrounding societal conditions and their impacts on fisheries governance and thereby the fisheries system are taken into account (Sarkki & Pihlajamäki, 2019)
As for fishers’ commitment to the Total Allowable Catch (TAC), which was driven by whether and how the fishers are included in the decision-making processes, the results show that the fishers were slightly more likely to be committed than not to policy in S1, S2 and S4, but in S3 the commitment was low due to exclusive decision-making process (S1 P(“high commitment”) = 0.55; S2 P(“high commitment”) = 0.6; S4 P(“high commitment”) = 0.52; S3 P(“low commitment”) = 0.74)
Summary
The EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) aims to ensure long-term environmental, economic and social sustainability of fishing activities (European Commission, 2013). This necessitates a holistic approach to governance and management, which acknowledges that the human and the ecological dimension of fisheries systems are integrated (Berkes, 2012; Folke, Pritchard, Berkes, Colding, & Svedin, 2007). This implies that the focus of fisheries sustainability assessments should be on the ecological aspects, which is often the case (Hilborn et al, 2015), and on the human dimension of sustainability.
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