Selecting and assessing social objectives for Australian fisheries management

This paper details Australian research that developed tools to assist fisheries managers and government agencies in engaging with the social dimension of industry and community welfare in fisheries management. These tools are in the form of objectives and indicators. These highlight the social dimensions and the effects of management plans and policy implementation on fishing industries and associated communities, while also taking into account the primacy of ecological imperatives. The deployment of these objectives and indicators initially provides a benchmark and, over the life of a management plan, can subsequently be used to identify trends in effects on a variety of social and economic elements that may be objectives in the management of a fishery. It is acknowledged that the degree to which factors can be monitored will be dependent upon resources of management agencies, however these frameworks provide a method for effectively monitoring and measuring change in the social dimension of fisheries management.Essentially, the work discussed in this paper provides fisheries management with the means to both track and begin to understand the effects of government policy and management plans on the social dimension of the fishing industry and its associated communities. Such tools allow the consideration of these elements, within an evidence base, into policy arrangements, and consequently provide an invaluable contribution to the ability to address resilience and sustainability of fishing industries and associated communities.     

Learning from the systematic approach to aquaculture zoning in South Australia: A case study of aquaculture (Zones – Lower Eyre Peninsula) Policy 2013

South Australia is among the regions internationally, where there are currently strong drivers for anthropogenic and ecosystem marine planning decisions. Specifically, South Australia, in both State and adjacent Commonwealth Waters, is currently accommodating increasing interests such as oil exploration by multi-national companies in the Great Australian Bight, implementation of recently declared State Marine Parks, an increased public awareness of marine developments, commissioning of a desalinisation plant, government-focused marine science initiatives, long-standing commercial fisheries, a transparent legislative and political stage, and a relatively new aquaculture industry. Amongst this growing diversity in marine-based activities, a dedicated aquaculture legislative framework was created in South Australia with the commencement of the Aquaculture Act 2001 (the Act) to centralise the legislative processes required to underpin aquaculture regulation and administration. This centralisation has helped to create an effective platform to streamline administrative processes, reduce duplication between various government agencies such as planning authorities and environment protection agencies, and ultimately fostered investment in, and growth of, the South Australian aquaculture industry. As such Aquaculture zone policies are a key strategic management tool for sustainable aquaculture development in South Australia into the future. This paper provides a case study (Aquaculture (Zones – Lower Eyre Peninsula) Policy 2013) of the legislated regional marine planning framework for aquaculture development used in South Australia, with a focus on the key functions and processes that may have broader applications.     

Ballast water management in Canada: A historical perspective and implications for the future

Non-indigenous species (NIS) can create significant risks when introduced to foreign ecosystems. One of the many vectors facilitating the global transport of NIS is ballast water, and as commercial shipping increases so does the threat of ballast water-mediated introductions. Despite Canadian regulations, consistent with international guidelines put forth by the International Maritime Organization in the early 1990s, ballast water remains a potential vector for the introduction of many NIS to Canadian marine ecosystems: there have been no new introductions in the Laurentian Great Lakes Region since 2006, yet marine ecosystems continue to see the introduction and establishment of NIS. This paper details and analyzes the development of Canadian ballast water management (BWM), in the context of marine ecosystems, and identifies issues therein. BWM in Canada has a number of management gaps that have persisted since large-scale BWM began in the late 1980s. These include BWM exemptions for vessels not exiting the North American continental shelf, and limitations of effectiveness of mid-ocean exchange as the predominant management method in marine ecosystems. In addition, ballast water regulations for the Canadian Arctic may require additional consideration as the Arctic will likely continue to see an increase in both warming and commercial shipping in the future, thereby increasing the potential risk of NIS. In order to adequately protect all Canadian marine ecosystems, it is recommended that the current BWM regime: fill gaps in management to help prevent further introduction and spread of NIS; focus equally on both marine and freshwater regions, and; look to other aggressive BWM strategies such as those being developed by the state of California.     

Social and economic consequences of 40 years of Dutch quota management

The Netherlands was one of the first nations to introduce ITQs in their fisheries to manage national yearly Total Allowable Catches (TACs). These ITQs have gradually developed from an individual quota system in 1976 to an ITQ system in the 1980s. In 1993 the system was reformed into a co-management system. In this paper it is argued that many of the usual negative socio-economic consequences of ITQs mentioned in the literature have been largely absent, due to the embeddedness of ITQs in co-management arrangements. However, cracks have appeared lately in this combined management system, allowing an identification of its vulnerabilities. These findings show that the social and economic structure of Dutch fisheries is changing from a rather cooperative to a more competitive and exclusive system, more like conventional ITQs.     

A global review of the impact of forest property rights interventions on poverty

Secure property rights are widely understood as critical for socio-economic development and sustainable land management in forested areas. Policies and programs, ranging from devolution of specific resource rights to formal land titling, have therefore been implemented to strengthen forest tenure and property rights in countries around the world. Despite the prevalence and importance of these efforts, however, systematic understanding of their effects on poverty remains lacking. We address this gap by systematically reviewing evidence on the impact of forest property rights interventions on poverty worldwide. We drew from a systematic map of evidence on forest-poverty links (Cheng et al., 2019) and used a population-intervention-comparator-outcome (PICO) framework to identify relevant studies. Our final dataset included 61 articles published from 2002 to 2016 comprising 91 case studies across 24 countries. Of these, only 11 articles (22 cases) used quasi-experimental methods to control for confounders. We find that almost all studied interventions (n = 88; 97%) focused on rights to access a forest area or withdraw resources from it. Relatively few studied interventions supported the more extensive property rights of exclusion (32%) and alienation (10%). Overall, reported impacts on both income/consumption and capital/assets dimensions of poverty were generally positive or mixed. Results from more robust quasi-experimental assessments showed greater variation, with case studies as likely to report negative as positive impacts on both poverty dimensions. We find tentative support for the economic theory that more secure property rights yield positive welfare effects. However, the paucity of evidence from more robust impact assessments constrains our ability to draw generalizable conclusions about the poverty impacts of different kinds of forest property rights interventions.     

Specifying and Configuring Routing Policies of Relative AS in RPSL

Routing policies specification language (RPSL) allows a network operator to specify routing policies at various levels in the Intemet hierarchy, for example at the autonomous system (AS) level. At the same time, policies can be specified with sufficient detail in RPSL so that the low level router configurations can be generated from them. This paper is a discussion on using the RPSL to describe routing policies of relative AS in the lntemet routing registry (IRR). We first analyze the relationships between a pair of ASes, and then explain how to specify various relative AS routing policies in RPSL. At last, we show an example of configuring routing policiesusing RtConfig that is a tool developed by the Routing Arbiter Project (RAP).     

Incorporating Māori values into land management decision tools

ABSTRACT

Environmental sustainability and the long-term wellbeing of Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) are interdependent and degradation of landscapes risks the progressive degradation of Māori wellbeing. The present study developed an analysis framework based on Ki Uta Ki Tai (holistic-mountains to the sea- management philosophy advocated by Ngāi Tahu) for exploring relationships between landcover and Māori values to enable predictions of cultural values through space and time. We used this framework to predict how two Māori values (Overall Health and Cultural Land Use) have been altered as a result of landcover change between 2001–2012 in three Canterbury catchments. The area of native vegetation declined while exotic pasture increased between 2001–2012, and there were corresponding declines in both cultural health scores. These results suggest that the change in landcover has reduced the ability of the landscape to support Māori values. This framework for assessing changes in Māori values with respect to changing environmental conditions may identify opportunities for Māori to better engage in land use management decisions.     

A social scientist's perspective on the Census of Marine Life

Over 300 natural scientists in 53 nations are taking part in the Census of Marine Life (CoML) to investigate what lived, what lives, and what will live in the oceans. The CoML is a scientific experiment that is exploring the limits of ocean science. The paper discusses the potential applications of CoML research and the mechanisms by which the potential benefits can be measured and preserved. I recommend developing and integrating policy advisory committees with the natural science activities to both maximize the benefits of the research and to avoid unintended consequences.     

Objectives of fisheries management: case studies from the UK, France, Spain and Denmark

The main objectives of fisheries management are generally similar throughout the world. These are often stated in policy documents such as the Common Fisheries Policy and the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. However, at the local level often the key objectives of management are more detailed, characterised by both the overriding management structure and the status and type of fishery concerned. In this paper, we consider case study fisheries from the UK, France, Spain and Denmark to compare some of the various types of fisheries and fisheries management systems that exist in the European Union. From this, we define the key objectives for each management system.     

Flexible management of fishing rights and a sustainable fisheries industry in Europe

Although overexploitation of commercial fish stocks in European waters has been in the public debate now for more than 20 years, the European Union has so far failed to implement sustainable fisheries management. Millions in subsidies paid to the fishing industry have led to significant excess capacity in the fishing fleet. Various feeble attempts to stop overexploitation of marine resources have failed. The cause is that fishing policy is highly dominated by short-term socioeconomic interests. There is an urgent need for a new fisheries management system in Europe that supports reductions in the fishing fleet, increases responsibility among fishers and guarantees long-term conservation of natural marine resources.Transferable rights to fish have proved a reliable and effective means of creating incentives to conserve marine resources. By strengthening individual fishing rights under flexible quota management systems, the EU Member States could, within the Common Fisheries Policy, make a significant contribution to conserving fish stocks, to reducing excess capacity and to raising the profitability of the fisheries industry. A closer look at existing reservations against a flexible management system shows most of the objections to be overstated or capable of resolution.