DISCUSSION PAPER 2
IS THE FAILURE OF CONVENTIONAL FISHERIES MANAGEMENT
MAKING THE CONSERVATIONIST APPROACH MORE APPEALING,
OFFERING A WAY OUT OF MAKING TOUGH DECISIONS?

by

Jake Rice ⁴¹

Summary

This paper contrasts the similarities and differences in the problems fisheries management agencies and conservation groups highlighted as central or serious to the failures in fisheries management and conservation. It then contrasts the goals of each of the two approaches, and finally the strategies, tactics, and tools advocated for use by each approach. The first set of comparative analyses will establish if the two groups are trying to solve the same problems. If so, do the groups differ in either where they wish to go (goals) or how they wish to get there (strategies, tactics, and tools)? From the differences, it may be possible to gain insight into whether the conservationist approach does, indeed, offer “a way out of making tough decisions”.

1. INTRODUCTION

Is the failure of conventional fisheries management making the conservationist approach more appealing, offering a way out of making tough decisions? For this question to be answered in the affirmative, three things have to be established as follows.

• Conventional fisheries management has, indeed failed.

• The conservationist approach is increasing in appeal.

• The conservationist approach offers a way out of making tough decisions.

Looked at superficially, the first two theses are, in fact, true. Judged on results, conventional fisheries management has failed-not always, but often, and sometimes spectacularly badly. A widely-quoted FAO overview has reported that 60 percent of the 200 major fish stocks around the world are currently overfished or fully exploited (FAO 1999). Looking at stocks in the developed world alone, where capacity to invest in fisheries science and management is comparatively large and has long history, the picture is no better. A review by the US National Marine Fisheries Service (2002) found that despite national legislation forbidding overfishing, 30.6 percent of 304 exploited stocks whose status was known were overfished or experiencing overfishing, and the status of another 655 (over 2/3 of the total) exploited stocks was unknown. Focusing even more specifically on groundfish stocks, where fisheries –and fisheries management –have the longest histories, the situation is still discouraging. According to the most recent assessments, spawning biomasses of 29 of the 45 stocks (64.1 percent) of Canadian Atlantic groundfish are at or near historic lows or have been declining steadily for the past decade (2003 & 2004 Stock Status Reports on www.dfo-mpo.ga/csas). In Europe, the Fall 2003 and Spring 2004 assessments of groundfish stocks in the northeast Atlantic found that 35 of 64 (64.4 percent) stocks were outside safe biological limits (2003 terminology) or either experiencing or at risk of experiencing impaired productivity (2004 terminology) (advisory extracts in www.ices.dk/acmf).

There are a number of indicators that the conservationist approach is increasing in appeal. Entire journals are devoted to the emerging discipline of “conservation biology” and many are devoting full issues to marine problems. Mainstream science journals are publishing articles on the failure of fisheries management and the need for new approaches (Myers and Worm 2003, Pikitch et al 2004). International and national species-at-risk groups have accelerated the listing of commercially exploited fish species (see Rice, this meeting, for statistics), supporting arguments that failures in fisheries management have placed a substantial portion of marine biodiversity, including exploited stocks, at risk of extinction (eg. Dulvy et al. 2004).

When evaluating the third thesis, it is necessary to analyse the assertion carefully. It suggests that conventional fisheries management has been ineffective because it has been unable to make tough decisions. That point, in turn, suggests that conventional fisheries management was at least addressing the proper issues, striving for proper goals, and trying to apply reasonable strategies and tools. A major impediment to progress was that the decisions which had to be made on the issues just required more pain-political, social and/or economic –than governments and managers were willing to take.

It is not obvious how to test if the issues and goals being addressed by fisheries management are the “proper” ones and if the tools used are “reasonable”, independent of the consequences of management-which the assertion argues are compromised by the lack of political will to make tough decisions. However, analyses across stocks have found that if status of stocks relative to reference points is used as an indicator of success of management, success is more likely when management follows science advice than when it does not (Rice and Cooper [2003] for a global survey of flatfish stocks; Piet and Rice [2004] for a review of all stocks in the OSPAR North Sea region assessed by ICES). This implies that at least science is addressing relevant issues and pursuing reasonable goals, and managers have some tools which can promote improved stock status. Therefore at least some of the problem is with the decision-making and implementation of decisions, which impede the use of the science information and management tools.

Hence, it is worth examining seriously the suggestion that the choices offered by the conservationists somehow require different decisions that are not as tough. This could be because the conservationists have goals on which multi-user consensus is easier to build, or they propose strategies and tools which either inflict less pain or offer ways to make the pain more enjoyable. If this is the case, then the conservationist approach may indeed offer a way out of the unsustainability maze.

This paper will investigate that situation analytically. It will first contrast the similarities and differences in the problems fisheries management agencies and conservation groups highlighted as central or serious to the failures in fisheries management and conservation. Next it contrasts the goals each of the two approaches, and finally the strategies, tactics, and tools advocated for use by each approach. The first set of comparative analysis will establish if the two groups are trying to solve the same problems. If so, do the groups differ in either where they wish to go (goals) or how they wish to get there (strategies, tactics, and tools)? From the differences, it may be possible to gain insight into whether the conservationist approach does, indeed, offer “a way out of making tough decisions”.

2. METHODS

2.1 Sources

I contrasted the problems, goals, and strategies and tools from major policy documents by five national and international government agencies with core mandates for fisheries management (directly or indirectly), with those from the policy documents of five major international conservationist groups or expert groups formed and espousing a strongly conservationist philosophy. For the management agencies I chose the following.

• Magnuson-Stevens Act (as amended in 1996 as the Sustainable Fisheries Act-Feder version [US 1996]) as the conceptual basis for fisheries management in the United States.

• Atlantic Fishery Policy Review (Government of Canada 2004) as the most current expression of the management philosophy and strategies in Canada.

• Green Paper for the EU Common Fisheries Policy (European Communities 2001) as a representation of what fisheries managers in the European Union would like to undertake and achieve (before the complex political processes in the EU altered the objectives and tools for reasons which might not benefit sustainability and conservation).

• Looking to the Future-A review of Commonwealth Fisheries Policy (2003a) and New Directions for Commonwealth Fisheries Management in the 1990s (1989 –the fisheries policy being reviewed) as the basis for Fisheries Management in Australia.

• FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing (FAO 1995) as the most complete compendium of thought on sustainable fisheries management by an international agency with concerns for the developing as well as the developed world.

For the environmental groups, I chose groups which were widely credible, and staffed by well credentialed professionals. More extreme conservationist groups and publications do exist, but I judged that if a “conservationist approach” is to be adopted by governments, it is more likely to arise from the documents of widely credible and generally constructive groups than from confrontational groups espousing comparatively strident views and approaches.

I used:

• policy statements by two major international conservation groups with wide support and track records of working constructively with government agencies:

  • Creating a Sea Change (1996) cosponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF);

  • Ocean Rescue/Endangered Seas, a more recent (2003) policy by the WWF,

• the fisheries and marine philosophy and strategies of Greenpeace, a group with more confrontational interactions with some governments, in their initiatives;

  • Fishing in Troubled Waters;

  • Save our Seas (2004);

• reports of two expert groups:

  • America's Living Oceans by the Pew Ocean Commission (2003);
  • the Marine Systems chapter (spring 2004 draft) of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

3. APPROACH

From each source, I tabulated three classes of items: the main problems each identified relative to fisheries management, the main goals each espoused as the key features of a better future, and the main strategies, tactics, and tools each promoted as promising ways to move forward. In the tabulation I assigned one of four scores as follows, taking advantage of the fact that each document uses bulleted points, top level headings, or key recommendations to highlight the issues that they consider most important.

1. A feature (problem, goal, tool) featured prominently in a highlighted format;

2. a feature not placed in a highlighted format, but discussed explicitly in the narrative below a highlighted point;

3. a feature not mentioned explicitly, or at best in passing, but clearly underlying other material given prominence in the document (so they have to believe in it);

4. a feature where statements are made explicitly downgrading the factor as important or relevant.

(In a few cases the same feature can receive a 2 or 3 and a 4 in different parts of long document, suggesting some internal contradiction in the document).

From the three sets of paired tabulations, I first examined what problems (and goals, and strategies) were consistently given priority by governments and by conservationist groups. I then focused on the differences in priority the two approaches give to common entries, and, importantly, entries which were usually on the list of one approach, and absent or infrequently included on the list of the other. This analysis provides a factual basis for determining exactly what differs between the “conventional” fisheries management approach and the conservationist approach. The comparative analysis is augmented by a few selected proposals from the conservationist documents, which do not fit in the analytical framework developed, but which are potentially important components of the differences between the approaches. I then consider if those differences really do offer a way out of making tough decisions.

This analysis is imperfect in several ways. Except for the FAO document, each conventional fisheries management document has a geographic focus (national for US, Canada, and Australia; group of nations for the EU), and FAO has advisory but not direct management authority. On the other hand aside from the Pew Commission report, all the conservationist documents take a global perspective. Hence there are likely to some differences, particularly in problems and goals, just because of the geographic scale being addressed and the different accountabilities of the two types of groups.

The assignment of scores was done as objectively as possible, but still reflects one person's judgments. Moreover, in the cases of Greenpeace and the WWF there was no single document which could be taken as laying out the entire conceptual and policy basis for fisheries management, and I may have missed documents which those groups would argue are core parts of their framework. These shortcomings in the analytical approach can be improved in dialogue with the groups themselves, if this approach is pursued further.

The row entries in the tables are also somewhat heterogeneous, containing some “big issues” and some specific points which, it could be argued might be just a special case of some other row. Also, different documents rarely phrased the same consideration with identical words, so I often had to make judgment calls of whether two documents were making the same point or different ones. Particularly for items receiving a 1, I was fairly strict in not lumping considerations which to me seemed subsidiary with more inclusive items in the same table; if a group really features an item strongly in its document, it considers it important in its own right, even if it is also a part of other issues. I had to be more opportunistic in deciding when documents were actually making the same point with different words; again, a strategy which could be improved through further dialogue.

Notwithstanding the shortcomings, the analysis does bring out key similarities and differences among the two approaches. In turn it allows a more informed discussion of what new options are provided by taking a conservationist approach, and what choices lie down that path.

4. RESULTS

4.1 Perceptions of urgency

Interestingly, each source document includes statements that, at the time the document was written, fisheries management and marine conservation faced a crisis. The words used are even similar, despite nearly a decade of time elapsing between the first and most recent document, and the different roles and perspectives of the agency or group producing the document. To illustrate:

Government Perspectives :

“As far as conservation is concerned, many stocks are at present outside safe biological limits. They are too heavily exploited, or have low quantities of mature fish, or both. If current trends continue many stocks will collapse. … The fisheries sector is characterized by economic fragility resulting from over-investments, rapidly rising costs, and a shrinking resource base.”EU Common Fisheries Policy Green Paper, page 5.

“Certain stocks of fish have declined to the point where their survival is threatened, and other stocks of fish have been so substantially reduced in number that they could become similarly threatened as a consequence of (A) increased fishing pressure, (B) the inadequacy of fishery resource conservation and management practices and controls, or (C) direct and indirect habitat losses which have resulted in a diminished capacity to support existing fishing levels.” Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 104–297.

“Despite advances in the development of sustainable fishing over the last decade, certain problems may prevent improved management of the fisheries and threaten to undermine [species list]… landings. There are continued threats to conservation and stock rebuilding in some fisheries...Many fleets are still simply too large given the availability of resources”. Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review, page 3.

Environmental Group Perspectives:

“The loss of critical coastal ecosystems combined with overfishing has precipitated a collapse in commercial and artisanal fisheries. …Species with a long life and low reproductive rate are particularly at risk. … For many species, populations are being affected as their age, size, and genetic diversity are reduced through selective fishing. … Not only does this fundamentally alter the diversity of marine ecosystems, but scientists fear that soon we may have little left to catch other than invertebrates.” Creating a Sea Change, page 20.

“The combined stresses of overfishing, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change are imperilling our seas and the plant and animal species they sustain. …many of the world's major fisheries are overfished or on the edge of collapse. Almost inconceivably, staples such as [species list] will soon be threatened and the industries they support, crippled.” WWF Ocean Rescue, cover page.

“World Fish stocks and catches are in decline and the coastal habitats on which many of the world's fish stocks rely on at some stage in their lifecycles are being degraded. The combination of overfishing and degradation or conversion of habitats, which contributes to the loss of biodiversity and food provisioning occurs in both developed and developing countries, where export-driven fisheries are overfished, which diverts food away from the domestic market and the fishing sector declines as a source of employment in many developed countries.” Millennium Assessment, Chapter 25, page 14.

“Thirty percent of the fish populations that have been assessed are overfished or being fished unsustainably. An increasing number of these species are being driven towards extinction. … Destructive fishing practices are damaging vital habitat on which fish and other living resources depend. Combined, these aspects of fishing are changing relationships among the species in food webs and altering functioning of marine ecosystems.” America's Living Ocean, page iv.

All groups clearly start from the perspective that there have been failures in past fisheries management, and the situation cannot be allowed to worsen. Improvements are needed, and the major differences are in the tone used to convey the urgency, not the need for urgent action.

4.2 Key problems which must be addressed (Table 1)

There are great similarities in the problems identified by those associated with the conventional fisheries management approach and with the conservationist approach. Both see overfishing as a core concern. Both acknowledge the associated problems of the ineffectiveness of fisheries management to control fishing in the past, and the poor compliance and lack of stewardship of many fishers. Both also see loss of traditional livelihoods in fisheries communities as a central problem to be addressed

The differences between the lists of central problems are revealing, however. Whereas conventional fisheries management expresses concern over commercial loss of exploited stocks, conservationist approaches express pre-eminent concern over loss of biodiversity and extinction of exploited species. The difference in perspective between the two approaches is important; illustrating that economic accountability carries little weight in the conservationist view. Conventional fisheries management also lists the generic issue of ecosystem effects of fishing as a major concern, in a few cases accompanied specifically by habitat damage by fishing gear. In the conservationist approach, on the other hand, a number of individual impacts are listed separately, varying slightly from group to group depending on their individual historical foci. The specification of effects again reflects much more priority to these effects in the conservationist approach. It is also possible that whereas conventional fisheries managers have been made aware that fishing can have detrimental “ecosystem effects”, they have yet to educate themselves about these effects fully enough to offer more than generalities

In the harvesting side, conventional fisheries management views the high priority problem of overcapacity of fishing fleets as being driven by excessive participation, with a subsidiary problem of excessive dependence of the industry on government. The conservationist approach also consistently gives priority to overcapacity, but links it directly to government subsidies, and to some extent to expanding technology. There is an important nuance in this distinction, as conventional fisheries management sees the overcapacity problem inflicted on it by industry and community dependence, whereas the conservationist approach sees the problem created by governments’willingness to provide subsidies.

In various combinations, groups associated with a conservationist approach also include several problems that receive at best passing mention from conventional fisheries management approaches. Pressure from international trade and globalization was one such factor, where most conservationist groups identified it as an important impediment to achieving sustainability but the only conventional fisheries management group to identify it as a key problem was the EU. In that case globalisation was seen as a threat to its opportunities to fish, rather than as a threat to healthy ecosystems. Also the conservationist approach consistently includes pollution and coastal development as concerns for fisheries management, whereas the management agencies apparently see them as “someone else's problem” and do not include them in fisheries policy. Finally, lack of attention to science advice is a major concern to most coming from a conservationist approach, whereas it rarely received mention as a problem in the policy documents of conventional fisheries management. All three of these differences are consistent with the hypothesis that conservationists tend to look at even local fisheries management problems from a holistic perspective, whereas conventional fisheries managers do not give priority to issues outside their immediate jurisdiction. The implications of this difference in perspective were addressed in section 5 of this paper, Discussion.

4.3 Key goals to be achieved (Table 2)

Interestingly, whereas the conservationist perspective produced a longer list of problems which needed to be addressed urgently, it also produces a shorter list of goals to be achieved. This is consistent with conventional fisheries management viewing the responsibilities of managers and governments as more complex and diverse than conservationist approaches do, with many social, economic, and political demands to balance with the ecological needs. Sustainability of uses is at the top of both lists, and protection of habitats is uniformly present in Tables 2a and 2b, although conventional fisheries management is often more focused on fish habitat rather than habitat quality generally, and overall gives it slightly less importance than in the conservationist approach.

Many of the other goals are common to both approaches, but their priority and sometimes directions often differ. The conservationist approach gives high priority to ensuring healthy ecosystems and protecting biodiversity, including restoring populations and ecosystems where necessary. Rebuilding depleted stocks is more often implicit rather than explicit in their goals. The conventional fisheries management approach, on the other hand, focuses more on rebuilding depleted populations of exploited species and reducing the ecosystem effects of fishing. The difference is consistent with the conservationist approach viewing impacts from the ecosystem towards the causes of harm, where the conventional fisheries management perspective looks outward from the fishery.

All groups want improved management effectiveness, and particularly improved effectiveness of international fisheries management agencies and instruments. The conventional fisheries management approach seems to expect to achieve effective management more indirectly through improved stewardship, accompanied by better fisheries practices and more and better science. Management effectiveness is a goal itself to most conservationist approaches and not a consequence of achieving other goals, such that for example the role of science in supporting effective management does not translate into specific goals for increased science.

The conventional fisheries management approach, on the other hand, has a number of interrelated goals about the management process, including making governance more inclusive, transparent, and equitable. It is often implied however, that inclusiveness related to resource users more than other groups, and equity is among existing participants, and transparency is more about sharing knowledge than sharing power. The conservationist approach wants decentralised management, improved policy frameworks, and view equity in a wider social context. Power is definitely something that governments must at least share, if not yield, to communities. None actually list inclusiveness as top-level priority, although all it is implicit throughout all the documents from that perspective.

Conservationist make reduced by-catch and reduced fishing capacity as explicit goals. They uniformly want to see capacity reduction achieved through removing government subsidies and greater compliance through stronger government action. Reduction of by-catch and capacity is also usually a goal in conventional fisheries management. However, usually the hope is to achieve reduced by-catch and effort while maintaining fisheries employment and achieving yield-based goals. Rather than express a goal as removal of government support, conventional fisheries management usually phrases their goal as achieving self-reliant industries. Again, the differences are subtle but important.

4.4 Strategies, tactics and tools

Both the conservationist approach and the conventional fisheries management approach recommend use of many of the same tools, but again almost always with important nuances that differ. Both approaches also feel that an ecosystem approach and the application of precaution are important to improving the sustainability of fisheries, as is the adoption of integrated management processes. Both approaches also believe in a stronger role for science in management, with substantial importance given to greater support for data collection, research, and assessments. Education and training of those in the industry also receives substantial support from both approaches.

Beyond those commonalities, differences begin to be found. Both approaches argue that it is important that management become more decentralized and decision-making become more transparent and inclusive. However, conventional fisheries management expect greater inclusiveness will result in a greater sense of stewardship from harvesters whereas the conservationist approach expects more responsible governmental decisions from including more parties in policy formation and management planning.

Both approaches also acknowledge the importance of objectives-based management and comprehensive management plans for fisheries, with objectives being set for components of ecosystems other than just the target species of the fishery. However the conservationist approach has much lower expectations than does the conventional fisheries management approach, with regard to the effectiveness of objectives and reference points as management tools. The differences are particularly strong with regard to recovery planning for depleted fish stocks, which are consistently a high priority for conventional fisheries management but considered a secondary factor from the conservationist approach. Management objectives, reference points, and recovery plans are all tools already embraced by conventional fisheries management, and largely developed in that framework. Their greater expectations of effectiveness could be a consequence of either managers having faith in their ability to use their tools effectively, or conservationists having a fundamental distrust of fisheries managers to use tools decisively for conservation objectives.

Both approaches also believe that there is a role for economic instruments in addressing the problems with fisheries, but in different ways. Interestingly, certification of ecological sustainability is attractive to some adherents of both approaches, and also viewed with scepticism by some following both approaches, particularly those in a conservationist approach. That scepticism seems to be based on concerns that certification may disadvantage fisheries with primarily social objectives relative to ones with primarily economic ones. This interpretation corresponds to the very strong priority that the conservationist approach gives to subsistence users, accompanied by efforts to diversity coastal economies, which is important in both approaches. However, the main economic instruments viewed by the conservationist approach are deterrents-simply termination of financial support to large-scale commercial fisheries.

Conventional fisheries management still believes that technical measures are of substantial value in making fisheries more responsible, as are specific surveillance and enforcement tools such as observers. The conservationist approach simply promotes regulating or even banning gears which impact habitats or have high by-catch rates. They also want to see more stringent enforcement, but believe this will come more from increased will to enforce and commitment to international instruments than just wider use of observers and surveillance technologies. The same directness characterizes the strategies and tools advocated by the conservationist approach for reducing capacity and effort. In that approach it is a strategy as well as a goal to simply reduce effort, eliminate subsidies, and restrict any further expansion of fisheries, often linked simply to increased will to make conservation decisions. In conventional fisheries management approaches, the application of sanctions, penalties and cost recovery programs are featured as ways to achieve the desired reductions, with elimination of subsidies important, but viewed as a complex process to achieve.

By far the single greatest difference, though, is that conventional fisheries management looks to additional management objectives, technical measures, and greater stewardship as the strategies and tactics to reduce ecosystem effects of fishing, supported in the case of a few agencies by marine protected areas. The conservationist approach, on the other hand, has endorsed large and numerous marine protected areas as the single most important tool in achieving the goals of sustainable fisheries and ecosystem management, and addressing the problems in fisheries. This view was promoted by every conservation group's documentation, usually as one of the most central messages.

5. DISCUSSION

Based on this analysis what really are the main differences between the conventional approach to fisheries management and the conservationist approach? With regard to problems to be addressed, the conservationist approach sees a broader range of problems as priorities, compared to the conventional fisheries management approach. Whereas the conventional fisheries management approach is focused in the first instance on depleted stocks, with ecosystem considerations second, the conservationist approach focuses first on biodiversity and risk of extinction of stocks and species, with depleted stocks just one component of the problem warranting little special status.

The other key difference is that whereas both approaches see overcapitalization and excessive fishing as core problems, their view of cause and effect is substantially different. In conventional fisheries management overcapacity rises from changes in stock status or fishing efficiency, degrading the economics of the fishery and creating the need for government support to continue viable industries and communities-subsidies respond to a need. In the conservationist approach the overcapacity and excessive fishing is a consequence of government subsidies –governments create the problem through their own policies and actions.

Consistent with points throughout the analysis, the conservationist approach applies a different standard to small-scale fisheries than large ones. From that perspective small-scale and artisanal fisheries are often the victims of expansion of large-scale fisheries. To the extent that government subsidies contributed to the expansion of large-scale fisheries, they are a part of the problem. To the extent that they contribute to keeping communities and small-scale fisheries alive when threatened with being out-competed by large-scale fisheries, they can be doing good.

With regard to goals, the core differences are associated with the conservationist approach having a broader ecosystem focus than that of conventional fisheries management. Conventional fisheries management emphasizes in the first instance rebuilding depleted stocks, whereas the conservationist approach is focused on restoring ecosystems and habitats more comprehensively. The conventional fisheries management approach seeks to achieve more effective management through improved stewardship, believing that increasing participation builds a greater sense of responsibility in the industry and more willingness to comply with management goals than existed in the past. The conservationist approach also seeks better management and believes it starts with decentralization and greater participation in management. However this is achieved by obtaining better decisions from local and regional groups with a greater diversity of participants at the table, less dominated by those with a financial interest in fishing, and then having those decisions enforced on commercial harvesters by governments with greater will to act. Removal of subsidies is also a goal, to further weaken the position of the large-scale commercial industries.

At the scale of strategies, tactics, and tools, conventional fisheries management places more faith in objectives-based management plans to guide fisheries, and technical measures to reduce unwanted impacts of non-target species and habitats. The conservationist approach believes more in community based management of small-scale fisheries, where formal plans may not be central to management, and to strict top-down regulation of fishing practices, including banning use of gears which damage habitats or which cannot have their by-catch problems largely eliminated through technical measures.

As noted earlier, the approach believes above all in creating networks of large no-take zones, in which fisheries operations simply are not allowed to occur, or occur only on subsistence levels.

Many of these differences are consistent with the generalisation, noted above, that conservationists tend to look at even local fisheries management problems from a holistic perspective, whereas conventional fisheries managers do not give priority to issues outside their immediate jurisdiction. For example, it seems that both groups compartmentalise their views of economic drivers of fisheries, but in different ways. One such driver is pressure from international trade and globalization. Most conservationist groups identified it as an important impediment to achieving sustainability, yet conventional fisheries managers may have acknowledged it as an issue in their policy documents but gave it little attention in goals and strategies. This contrasts markedly with the high value that conventional managers give to economic tools when applied to management of domestic fisheries; tools that conservationists view with scepticism when used on domestic scales. Another example is pollution and coastal development, which conservationists view as a concern of fisheries management, yet fisheries management agencies leave to other jurisdictions. The implications of this difference in defining the scope of fisheries management are important, as both perspectives present potential problems for making progress towards sustainability. The conservationist approach invites the grafting of diverse social and integrated planning issues onto even local fisheries issues, distracting effort from fixing a problem to “fixing the world”. The conventional approach invites myopia, allowing substantial effort to be expended fine-tuning details which are tractable and ignoring fundamental problems because the managers feel that they do not have authority to tackle them.

In summary, there are numerous differences between the conventional fisheries management approach and the conservationist approach. Some may appear to be just nuances, but even most of the nuances are important. Moreover, some of the differences are major. The important consideration is: “Do these differences offer a way out of making tough choices?”

The choices which have to be made are certainly not easier. The choices may actually be ones which make more sense; for example it may not be possible to rebuild individual stocks (European Communities 2003) without rebuilding the size composition of the community in which it occurs (Pope et al. 2003). However, the scientific challenges of knowing what to do to restore ecosystems include all the scientific challenges of restoring individual species as just special cases of a task which is much larger, and can only be more complex that a single small part of the task. Likewise, the number of human activities which have to be reduced, modified, or curtailed to restore an entire ecosystem, or even the fish community portion of it, can only be larger than the number of activities impacted in restoring a single stock. This, in turn, requires cooperation from, and often sacrifices by, a much wider range of users, including fishers on stocks which are still healthy. Moreover not all of those who feel that they are making the sacrifices can expect to ever receive benefits from their perceived sacrifices-at least they cannot expect benefits to accrue in proportion to the sacrifices make by the different users. This makes the challenge much harder, and much less likely to succeed. Essentially every document reviewed from the conventional fisheries management approach, and some from the conservationist approach, stress that cooperation from fisheries in management activities is most likely when they expect that those who make the short-term sacrifices will be the ones to receive any subsequent benefits.

The options offered as choices are not necessarily more attractive, at least to the harvesters being asked to reduce and change their activities. In the conservationist approach they are being asked to accept less help from government, reduce effort by as much more than in conventional fisheries management, often invest more in more environmentally friendly gear, and above all, to cease fishing altogether in large parts of all marine areas. In a recent social science investigation of attitude of fishermen from the UK, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands towards closed areas, there was wide consensus in the industry that they would only consider closed areas as part of a comprehensive management plan. Moreover, their support would be for small areas, closed for specific purposes related to the target species of the fishery, and closed only for the periods of the year when the target species is engaged in the activity justifying the closure (EFEP 2004). These small and temporary closed areas for spawning, nursery areas, etc are very different from the networks of 20–40 percent of marine areas of the world that are a cornerstone of the conservationist approach. Adherents of the conservationist approach stress the long-term benefits to fisheries of such benefits (reviewed documents, Roberts at al 2002). However, a number of additional conditions usually have to be met for those benefits to accrue (Hilborn et al. 2004), and the trade-off of short term catch reductions for long term higher yields has been offered by conventional fisheries management for decades without being accepted by the industry in almost all cases (review in Rice, this volume).

Finally, the way that the choices will be made cannot be simpler in the conservationist approach than in conventional fisheries management. Both approaches have more inclusive, transparent, and decentralized governance as keys to their way forward. Central to the difference in their approaches to this issue, though, is that within the conservationist approach there will be a greater diversity of perspectives in the inclusive governance processes, the processes will be biased towards participants from small and artisanal fisheries over the interests from large-scale commercial fisheries, and the governance system will address policy issues more than implementation issues. It is hard to see how this will lead to easier decision-making. It certainly does not accord with the Canadian experience with inclusiveness in providing science support to management (Rice this volume) and development management strategies (the AFPR 2003, which took over three years and is not complete), nor with the developing EU approach to greater inclusiveness in assessment and management planning (ICES 2004). Decisions take longer to reach. Moreover, the conservationist approach argues that the greatest reductions should be by the large-scale industrial harvesters, who will lack incentives to remain part of a process that they feel is biased against them. The reports from the conventional fisheries management approach document well that the necessary compliance and stewardship needed from industry is only likely when they have high confidence in the fairness of the processes leading to the management decisions-and even then compliance is not assured.

So we find that the conservationist approach does not present easier choices (at least to those causing the overfishing and ecosystem impacts), does not offer more attractive options, and does not offer easier processes to reach decisions where there is reason to expect compliance. Why does it expect to succeed? In various ways, each of the documents from the conservationist perspective expected more decisive action from governments, national and international. For example, the Pew Report (page 47) recommends that all quota and conservation decisions be made unilaterally by a government fisheries service, solely on the basis of recommendations from teams of scientists from federal and state agencies and academia. The Millennium Assessment is strident in its criticisms of governments as “not willing to act for the good of the global commons … The refusal of governments to set sustainable harvest levels or to take a precautionary approach to the Common Fisheries Policy is the most blatant example of this (page 47)”. It ends the paragraph with a call for “a political commitment to use them [international instruments] to effect change.” The source of the greater will is unspecified, but is inferred to come from greater citizen pressure, expressed through the more inclusive consultation and decision processes.

Hence, at the end of the analyses, the key component in both approaches still seems to be a need for governments to be willing to act decisively. Both approaches acknowledge a track record of frequent failures in the past, which has led to the current crises which they all recognise. Conventional fisheries management is trying to address the failures by reducing the pressures on government to be the main actor, and building stewardship by the resource users. The conservationist approach is trying to address the failures by changing the politics of decision-making, so the short-term interests of the fishing industry come to lose most of the time, rather than win. It is not offering easier choices, more attractive choices, or easier ways to choose. It is making choices tougher in all three ways. However, it is expecting more toughness in dealing with the choices as well. Given the past, this may be the right thing to do.

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Table 1a. List of Issues which Government and Intergovernmental Agencies highlighted as serious concerns about current fisheries.

* Globalisation of harvesting and marketing was discussed in several parts of the Australian review, but as a fact of life and not a problem in need of corrective action.
⁴² Magnusson-Stevens Act (1996) - Table 1& 2; Section 2; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/magact/mag1.html#s2.
⁴³ Atlantic Fisheries Policy Review (2004) - Table, Section 1.1–1.3; Table 2 - Section 2.
⁴⁴ Green Paper on the Common Fisheries Policy Table 1-Chapter 1; Chapter 1.
⁴⁵ Australia-Looking to the Future: A Review of Common wealth Fisheries Policy; Chapters 1–4.
⁴⁶ Code of Conduct and Checklist; Table 1 - pp. 1–6.

Table 1b. Issues considered serious by Environmental Groups

• Dealt with in another chapter of the Millennium Assessment, where it is a high priority.

⁴⁷ WWF Ocean Rescue and Endangered Seas Programs.
⁴⁸ IUCN Sea Change (with WWF Co-sponsor) .
⁴⁹ Greenpeace-Fishing in Troubled Waters & Principles for Ecologically Responsible Fisheries.
⁵⁰ Pew Ocean Commission-America's Living Ocean.
⁵¹ Millennium Assessment-Chapter 25 –Marine Systems.

Table 2a. Goals of Government and Intergovernmental Agencies

* Goal was specifically to attract young people into fishing as a career.
**Goal was to take a more ecosystem approach to management, of which ecosystem effects of fishing was a part.

Table 2b. Goals of Environmental Groups

Table 3a. Strategies, Tactics and Tools advocated by Government and Intergovernmental Agencies

* Mandatory on foreign vessels, considered for domestic vessels
** For countries, not fleets
*** Limit new entrants, no removals of existing participants

Table 3b. Strategies, tactics and tools advocated by Environmental Groups

* Not as part of fisheries program, but key goal
* Especially whale sanctuaries and deep water areas
** Targeted at large vessels
*** Dealt with in other chapters of the documents, where the strategies are developed as priority actions.

⁴¹ The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author, Jake Rice, Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada [email protected].