This paper provides summaries of presentations at a special session of IIFET 2012 that explored the potential value of a ‘wellbeing’ approach in small-scale fisheries, drawing on insights from the Governing Small-Scale Fisheries for Wellbeing and Resilience project. The research aimed to apply wellbeing concepts to both better understand fishery...
Small-scale fisheries are no exceptions to the requirements of staying within the biological bounds of sustainability, by purposively limiting fish harvests, and of maintaining productivity of oceans and freshwater systems, by protecting ecosystem health and habitat quality. However, while these fisheries, like all others, have the potential to pose conservation...
This paper explores how the implementation of appropriate policy measures and underlying institutions can support sustainability and resilience in fishery systems. The policies discussed fall into three categories. First are those relating directly to fishery management, including the development of a management portfolio, application of the precautionary approach, and implementation...
This document provides a summary of a Special Session held at the IIFET 2016 Scotland conference in July 2016. The registration number and title of the special session were 5329: Sustainability of Fisheries and Aquaculture: the Multidisciplinary Approach as a Key for Success. The session was organized by Elisa Ravagnan....
Subsidies are most often discussed within global fora (such as the World Trade Organization) in terms of concerns over trade distortions, if some countries gain an unfair advantage, through their subsidies, over unsubsidized industry elsewhere. In fisheries, this concern is matched by an environmental argument – that fish stock depletion...
There is increasing recognition that the oceans of the world support a wide range of economic sectors. Managing those multiple uses, within a ‘commons’ environment, is undoubtedly challenging. Approaches of ecosystem-based management (EBM), integrated ocean management (IOM) and marine spatial planning (MSP), with associated aspects of spatial allocation and conflict...
Transdisciplinary approaches and innovative combinations of social and ecological theory are required to deal with complexity and change in fisheries and other human-ecological systems. This paper examines the interplay and complementarities that emerge by linking resilience and social wellbeing approaches to better understand and govern fisheries. After first discussing the...
This presentation explores the interaction of the fishery sector and the emerging push for marine biodiversity conservation. These are viewed as two ‘streams’ of governance – flowing through global bodies (notably the United Nations), through nations (with interacting environmental and fisheries agencies), and through thousands of coastal communities worldwide (which...
To effectively respond to sustainability challenges, there is a need to find (or re-discover) suitable ways to govern, so as to make decisions that maintain healthy environments and sustainable livelihoods in fishery systems. While efforts to this end are needed at all governance levels, from the global to the local,...