–0.5 State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture – FAO
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and production scales. The key features of the EAFEAA process as proposed in FAO Technical Guidelines
10
are: •
Develop a management plan for a specific areasystem with operationally defined boundaries.
• Envisage stakeholder participation at all levels of planning and
implementation. •
Consider all key components of a fisheryaquaculture system ecological, social-economic and governance while also taking external drivers into
account. •
Identify and prioritize sustainability issues through a formal process e.g. risk assessment.
• Reconcile management objectives related to environmental and social
economic aspects, including explicit consideration of trade-offs. •
Establish an adaptive management process to adjust the tactical and strategic performance based on past and present observations and experiences.
• Use “best available knowledge” as the basis for decision-making, including
both scientific and traditional knowledge, while promoting risk assessment and management and the notion that decision-making should take place also
where detailed scientific knowledge is lacking.
• Build on existing management institutions and practices.
As part of this process, managers and stakeholders should identify, discuss and agree on the broad objectives and values that the management system is to address.
This step is important as different stakeholders have different values, which can lead to conflicts and inefficient management systems. Values should be nested and coherent
across scales and sectors.
The sections below examine some of the main model assumptions and how to enhance the ability of the fisheries and aquaculture sector to meet the demand for fish.
The international community has to reconcile environmental sustainability objectives with the growth in fish production that is expected to occur as a result of
market forces while enhancing food security and alleviating poverty. Although widely recognized at high political levels e.g. Rio+20, in practice these objectives remain only
loosely and superficially linked. Capture fisheries and aquaculture operate at different scales, from local production systems to the global marketplace, and their institutional
and legal frameworks also exist at different scales. Often, there is very poor policy coherence across scales and between stated policy goals and market-driven processes.
Resource managers will also face increasingly competitive use of aquatic ecosystems and having to choose among options for the greatest good for the greatest number of
people. An ecosystem approach facilitates the incorporation of multiple objectives into resource management through a risk-based framework. It can also create the enabling
environment necessary for the sustainable production and governance of aquatic ecosystems.
Sustaining capture fisheries production
There is a concern that the current stable global catches may not be sustained. Trends show that the percentage of overfished stocks is increasing and that the
percentage of underfished stocks is decreasing see Figure 13 on p. 37. Thus, what is commonly referred to as “stability” in global catches is the result of fisheries moving
to underfished resources as others become overfished and depleted. This is happening at various scales, including at the global scale where long-distance fleets move to new
fishing grounds as the old ones are depleted. A recent trend has been for open-ocean fishers to move into deeper waters as near-shore stocks decline.
11
Marine capture fisheries on conventional resources have apparently reached their aggregate maximum
level of contribution at the price of sequential overfishing. The concern is that if this trend is not halted, there could be a decline in global catches as new fishing grounds
become exhausted. None of the outlook studies conducted to date has considered this aspect.
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Outlook
The challenges for capture fisheries are well known and part of the international discourse. Sustaining or increasing present global level of catches will be constrained
by, inter alia, impaired resourceecosystem productivity and changing ecosystem structures. Discards and impacts on the ecosystems’ vulnerable habitats, species
and biodiversity are locally significant, affecting resilience. Economic and social performance is insufficient, and the sector is overcapitalized. Most fisheries are in a
de facto open-access situation, and widespread illegal fishing is impairing effective stewardship. Conflicts abound e.g. between small- and large-scale subsectors, with
sectors competing for the same space or ecosystem services. In addition, pollution and coastal degradation are impairing productivity and food quality.
If the capture fisheries projections presented above are to be met, it is essential that the sector implement radical reforms. Continuing with “business as usual” will probably
result in the decline of global catches in a not-too-distant future. What needs to be done to improve the sector’s performance has been widely
identified and debated, with priorities set at the global level. Actions often referred to when addressing the unsustainability of fisheries include: reducing fishing capacity
and effort; establishing area closures e.g. marine protected areas; improving tenure resource allocationuser rights; eliminating subsidies; reducing discards, promoting full
use of catches and reducing post-harvest losses; and introducing new technology such as bycatch excluder devices. However, the relative importance of different sustainability
issues and the identification of appropriate measures is context-specific. The EAF process can identify issues and ways to address them so that priorities can be set as
relevant to context and depending on culture, type of fisheryissue and stakeholder perceptions.
Furthermore, the challenge is not only to produce but to do so in a way that is environmentally sustainable and ensures that sector development takes place in the
context of priority areas such as food and nutrition security and poverty reduction. Again, it is important that appropriate processes be put in place to translate these
goals into decision-making and implementation coherent with them.
It is argued that, to meet these multiple goals, fisheries and aquaculture development should be guided by strong policies and management practices that
explicitly address the aforementioned objectives, and that these are put into practice through appropriate holistic, adaptive and participatory management processes.
Managing fisheries as socio-ecological systems Fisheries have been managed, and many still are, with a focus on the resources
being exploited. Many people consider the setting of total allowable catches and the supporting processes of fishery data collection and analysis as being the main
activities of fisheries management, without considering that sustainability requires addressing fisheries as socio-ecological systems whose sustainability depends on all
its parts. “Sustainable” fisheries are those where fishers can generate, through their work, sufficient resources to cover, at the very least, all the basic needs for food,
health and education, while adopting ecologically sustainable exploitation practices. Here, government creates an enabling environment according to context for that to
happen. The system has to be characterized by transparency, trust and a shared vision by stakeholders, government and society at large. As for the agriculture sector overall,
there is now greater awareness of the need to address sustainability issues, also in an integrated way by addressing the three pillars of sustainability. It is essential that
stakeholders be actively involved and motivated to adopt more sustainable patterns of resource use.
For example, in The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012,
12
a graph of hypothetical inland fisheries was plotted on two axes: one measuring production
parameters and the other social and economic parameters. Rather than categorizing a fishery only according to its state of exploitation, a fishery would be tracked along
the two-dimensional space and evaluated according to how it met management’s production and socio-economic objectives. For example, before the introduction of Nile
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perch, the Lake Victoria fisheries would have been plotted as highly productive many cichlid species but not very valuable. Following the introduction of high-value species,
the fishery would move to the quadrant indicating high economic value – which in fact was the objective of the management intervention. Similarly, recreational fisheries
with very low production but high value would be seen as meeting the management objective of increased economic value, but with decreased harvest of biomass.
An example of progress with EAF implementation is the EAF-Nansen project
13
in Africa. It aims to help to achieve food security and alleviate poverty through the development of sustainable fisheries management regimes and specifically through
the application of the ecosystem approach in marine fisheries. Key activities include supporting policy development and management practices consistent with
EAF principles, developing an expanded knowledge base in support of the EAF, promoting standardized data collection and monitoring. Capacity development is a
key, cross-cutting component. Twenty countries have engaged in the preparation of EAF management plans, and these are at different stages of development,
including final adoption by the competent authorities. Such plans can be an important tool for addressing capacity and institutional issues in a more systematic
and participatory way.
Developing adaptive management systems Fishery systems are complex and characterized by uncertainty. Management
interventions often have unknown or unpredictable effects, and possible impacts need careful consideration and analysis. Some of the constraints include the limited
transferability andor scaling up of experiences, and uncertainty in the outcomes of different management strategies. For many fishery systems, knowledge is poor,
particularly on interactions within and between the ecological and human parts of the system. In these situations, adaptive management, embedded within a co-management
setting, uses best available knowledge – including fishers’ knowledge – to make decisions and learn from outcomes.
Adaptive management allows stakeholders and management institutions to operate in the face of uncertainty, learning from the effects of their resource management
practices. It is often presented as a cycle with a number of essential steps: assess problem, design, implement, monitor, evaluate, adjust and restart the cycle. In fact,
adaptive management is at the heart of the ecosystem approach and the proposed EAF management cycle presented in Box 10.
Filling the supply–demand gap
The projection scenarios discussed above are based on the interplay of free-market forces and some important assumptions including aquaculture growth trends. However,
alternative scenarios could consider a more governance-driven development. The outlook for aquaculture under all the scenarios involves some major
assumptions, such as availability of fishmeal and fish oil, sufficient land and water for freshwater production, unrestricted ecosystem services for aquaculture, a neutral public
perception of the sector, and a low mariculture growth rate. The extent to which these assumptions are valid will have an impact on the projections in the baseline and other
scenarios.
In addition, although all the scenarios consider the sector’s capacity to recover from certain shocks through better management and improved technologies, perhaps some
threats e.g. diseases should be addressed in a more conservative way. Some of the above assumptions can be addressed at the global level, for example,
through the creation and implementation of global standards, consumer awareness and governance intervention in the form of appropriate incentives, while at the
farming and waterbody level, the EAA becomes a relevant strategy.
Use of fish from capture fisheries to feed aquaculture The above models and scenarios make assumptions on the sustainability of small
pelagic fish stocks, the costs and availability of fishmeal and fish oil, and how they affect the growth of aquaculture. A reduction in fishing pressure is generally desirable
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Outlook
in order to increase their resilience to climate variability and change, and to take account of the ecological role of these species in food webs. The use of so-called “low-
value” fish see section Transition from low-value fish to compound feeds in marine cage farming in Asia on pp. 161–168 as feed in aquaculture could provide an incentive
for continued overfishing of these ecosystems.
The use of wild-caught fish for reduction to fishmeal and fish oil may have important implications for food security and aquaculture in the next 20 years.
14
A similar situation concerns the use of low-value fish. At present, the increase in fishmealoil production for animal production including aquaculture can create
employment and improve living standards and food security among poor communities through employment opportunities.
15
However, in many areas small pelagic fish are an important part of the human diet. As fishmeal demand and price increase, it may become profitable to divert these
resources to fishmeal. High demand could make a traditional source of cheap protein less available to the poor and provide an incentive to overfish the stocks. Governments
Box 10 Adaptive management and the EAF management cycle
Setting up a process of monitoring and assessment of fishery performance is key to fisheries management and an essential aspect of adaptive systems.
Consultation with stakeholders
1 year
5–10 years
Best available knowledge