1. Fishery management and interested partiesby
Jean-Jacques Maguire
J’ai préparé la présentation en anglais pour des raisons pratiques - la majorité de la documentation originale étant dans cette langue. Je pourrai répondre à vos questions en français ou en anglais, comme vous le souhaitez, et si vous parlez lentement, vous pourrez les formuler en espagnol.
The prospectus prepared by COPEMED for the Forum lists three objectives:
A. To promote a multidisciplinary analysis between different stakeholders and countries, focusing on those fisheries which are of common interest;
B. To analyse the reasons why the fishing industry fails to implement the technical management measures adopted by the administration.
C. To promote processes which encourage the harmonisation of different stakeholder objectives.
I hope this presentation will help achieve some aspects of those three objectives.

2. Objective Convey to you that:
There is no ideal, universally applicable fishery management model
Successful fishery management pays proportionate attention to the four components of sustainability: bio-ecological, socio-economic, community, and institutional
Fishery management systems have a high probability of failure if they pay disproportionate attention to only one or a few of the components of sustainability
Parties involved in fishery management have more to gain from cooperation than from fighting
Based on my more than 20 years experience in the North Atlantic and in North East Pacific, I want to tell you that there is no ideal, universally applicable way of providing scientific advice for fishery management, nor to manage fisheries. The processes that I have been involved in, which include the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea in the Northeast Atlantic, as well as the Canadian and USA Domestic processes on both their Atlantic and Pacific coasts, have suffered a number of failures, some of them spectacular, despite substantial investments in fishery science and in fishery management. Success is therefore more than a question of financial resources.
I have come to the conclusion that successful fishery management requires achieving the four components of sustainability identified by Charles (2001 ): bio-ecological, socio-economic, community, and institutional sustainability. In such a multidimensional framework for sustainability, a process can only be described as successful if it is considered sustainable under the four components.
Several fishery management processes I am familiar with have focussed almost exclusively on the bio-ecological component of sustainability. They cannot be described as being or having been successful, sometimes even under that very component they were trying to achieve: most Canadian groundfish stocks remain severely depleted even though fisheries have been essentially closed at great socio-economic and community losses. On Georges Bank, fishery management decisions appear to have resulted in stock rebuilding, thereby achieving sustainability for some species under the bio-ecological component, but at considerable socio-economic and institutional costs. In Europe, many of you will be familiar with the problems with North Sea cod or with Northern hake.
Finally, I hope to convince you that Parties involved in fishery management have more to gain from cooperation than from fighting on another.

3. Stakeholder vs interested parties
Stake = an interest or share in an undertaking (as a commercial venture)
Could be interpreted as restrictive to only those with a direct financial/monetary interest
Interested parties is more inclusive and will be used here, similar to several international instruments
The definition of stake is “an interest or share in an undertaking (as a commercial venture”. The word stakeholder could therefore be interpreted in a restrictive sense, applying only to those that have a direct financial interest in fishery matters. This is not the spirit of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, nor that of many other international instruments.
The word could also be interpreted more generously to include all the “parties interested” in fishery management, but such an interpretation could be challenged. The phrase “interested parties” is not subject to such challenges, and will therefore be used here.

4. Interested parties - FAO CoC art. 1.2
The Code is global in scope, and is directed toward members and non-members of FAO, fishing entities, subregional, regional and global organisations, whether governmental or non-governmental, and all persons concerned with the conservation of fishery resources and management and development of fisheries, such as fishers, those engaged in processing and marketing of fish and fishery products and other users of the aquatic environment in relation to fisheries.
Article 1.2 of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries states that:
The last part of the paragraph “and other users of the aquatic environment in relation to fisheries” can include just about any one.

5. Interested parties - FAO CoC art. 6.13
States should, to the extent permitted by national laws and regulations, ensure that decision making processes are transparent and achieve timely solutions to urgent matters. States, in accordance with appropriate procedures, should facilitate consultation and the effective participation of industry, fishworkers, environmental and other interested organisations in decision making with respect to the development of laws and policies related to fisheries management, development, international lending and aid.

6. Interested parties - Review of CFP
Article 31.2:
Regional Advisory Councils shall be composed principally of fishermen and other representatives of interests affected by the Common Fisheries Policy, such as representatives of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, environment and consumer interests and scientific experts from all Member States having fisheries interests in the sea area or fishing zone concerned.
In the European Union, the Council of Fishery Ministers agreed in December 2002 (Art. 27) that “(27) To contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy, Regional Advisory Councils should be established to enable the Common Fisheries Policy to benefit from the knowledge and experience of the fishermen concerned and of other stakeholders and to take into account the diverse conditions throughout Community waters.”
Article 31.2 and 31.3 state that:
Some jurisdictions have advanced quite far in including interested parties in he fishery management process. The USA, in particular, have implemented a very open and transparent system where anyone interested in fisheries issues can attend stock assessment meetings as well as all management meetings. Regional fishery management councils are tasked with identifying management requirements, and developing management plans to be approved by the Secretary of Commerce (in charge of the National Marine Fisheries Service).
Not only can anyone interested in fishery management attend meetings at all stages of the development of a fishery management plan, most groups of interested parties have a voting seat on the Council.
However, although the USA system is good on paper, it is highly bureaucratic, slow to react, and prone to challenges in the court of law by both fishing and environmental interests.

7. Interested parties - Csirke and Sharp
Direct users:
Fishing sector: small-scale fishermen, ship-owners, crew
Industrial sector (processing)
Marketing sector
Sport fishing
Consumers
Indirect users:
Support industries: building boats and factories, means of catching, canning and shipping
Builders of ports and infrastructure: realise their profits early in the development of a fishery.
Csirke and Sharp (1984) provide a concise description of the user groups to be considered in fishery management, and of their interactions. What they call “user groups” are in fact today’s “interested parties.
Csirke, J. and G.D. Sharp (eds) Reports of the Expert Consultation to examine changes in abundance and species composition of neritic fish resources. San José, Costa Rica, April A preparatory meeting for the FAO World Conference on fisheries management and development. FAO Fish.Rep., (291) Vol.1: 102 p.
First, I would like to note that none of the parties listed above has the objective of depleting the resource (except when a species is considered a best to be rid of). Several parties share the objective of earning a living either directly or indirectly from the resource, and this implies prudent management. Others are affected by fishery management either through the food they consume or the enjoyment they derive from recreational fishing.
Interactions and conflicts are immediately foreseeable, within as well as between user groups/interested parties. What follows are generalisations that suffer many exceptions. They are given for illustration purpose, not to imply that the description fits all the users in a given group. As an example of conflicting objectives within a group, it could be expected that those of the small scale fishermen living in a small fishing dependent community and spending most of his earnings there would be different from those of the institutional investor who has purchased a fishing vessel to have a short term return on investment. In this example, the ship owner has less of a stake in the long term well being of the fishery than the small scale fishermen does. If the resource collapses, the investor puts his money elsewhere, while the small scale fisherman could be left with a considerable problem and nowhere to go.
Similarly, the interactions between the fishing sector and the marketing sector are easy to see: the marketing sector wants to meet the demands of the market while the fishing sector wants to sell its catch, which despite its best efforts, does not necessarily correspond to what the market wants, or what the marketing sector thinks the market wants.
Other interactions are also easy to anticipate. For example, the boat building sector will want to continue to build new boats or refit old ones, regardless of the need to reduce fishing capacity. The sports fishing sector will want trophy size catch which can only be achieved at exploitation rates considerably below those associated with Maximum Sustainable Yield. A similar situation would occur between two commercial gear sectors harvesting different size fish: the sector catching the small fish can be considered to intercept the fish destined to the other gear sector.
These examples are given to show that it is legitimate to have different objectives, that negotiations and/or arbitration are necessary to resolve conflicts between the various users.

8. Is fishery management needed?
“It is generally accepted that without management, the benefits that most fisheries produce will diminish. This is the “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968) argument, and it is now clear that a tragedy will occur in the absence of management, whether that management come from central government or local communities. In many cases, the resources will even become commercially extinct (that is, even though some members of the species survive, they are not worth fishing for).”
Berkes et. al. (2001)
Berkes, F., Mahon, R., McConney, P., Pollnac, R. and Pomeroy, R Managing small scale fisheries – alternative directions and methods. IDRC, Ottawa, Canada, 309p.
Berkes et. al (2001) provide a clear and concise discussion of why fishery management is necessary. Fishery management does not necessarily mean a command and control system. They recognise that some of the more successful fishery management processes are in fact locally based, involving all those interested in fishery management on a consensual basis.

9. What is fishery management?
FAO Technical Guidelines no 4: "The integrated process of information gathering, analysis, planning, consultation, decision-making, allocation of resources and formulation and implementation, with enforcement as necessary, of regulations or rules which govern fisheries activities in order to ensure the continued productivity of the resources and the accomplishment of other fisheries objectives.

10. The fishery management cycle
Planning
Objectives
Feedback
Information gathering
Analysis and forecasting
Consultations with interested parties
Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation of the functions and responsibilities of a fisheries management authority in relation to fishing, and the inter-relationships between the functions. From: Cochrane, Kevern L A fishery manager’s guidebook. FAO Fisheries Technical Papers - T424, 236 pages.
Enforcement
Decision making
Formulation of rules
Implementation

11. Fishery management institutions
The FAO Technical Guidelines on fishery management suggest that fishery management institutions have two major components:
the fishery management authority and
the interested parties
Article 31.3 of the review of the CFP
Representatives of national and regional administrations having fisheries interests in the sea area or fishing zone concerned shall have the right to participate in the Regional Advisory Councils as members or observers. The Commission may be present at their meetings.
How do these interact? Are they both in the fishery management process as equal partners, or is one component “outside” the fishery management cycle with more “authority”?
Are the scientists and fishery managers/administrators interested parties as well? I would like to suggest that they should consider themselves as one of the interested parties, albeit one a slightly different role - that of facilitating reaching consensus on objectives and measures.
The European Council of Fishery Ministers (Art. 31.3) considers scientists as one of the interested parties, but not their fishery managers (who advise them).

12. Alternative views of the fishery management cycle
Management Objective Driven
Stock Assessment Driven
Conduct Preliminary Assessment of Fishery
Assess Stock
Industry Input (interested parties)
Establish Policy
Formulate Management Strategy
Formulate Management Strategy
Biological Input
Implement Management
Fig. 3.1 in Berkes, F., Mahon, R., McConney, P., Pollnac, R. and Pomeroy, R Managing small scale fisheries - alternative directions and methods. IDRC, Ottawa, Canada, 309p.
Assess Fishery (including stocks if needed)
Political Input
Get to Know the Fishery
Implement Management
Establish Policy

13. The fishery management process today
Characterised by conflict
Lack of communication
Poor understanding
Could be summarised as:

14. The Fishery management process today
Scientific sector
The industry
This picture is fuzzy, and that is on purpose. It is meant as a caricature of existing fishery management processes, and as such fuzziness appears appropriate.
The industry is constantly fighting in the background, the scientific sector is doing its mumbo jumbo, the management authority is making bold decisions and the fishermen suffer. You can assign the “good” role to your prefer interested parties (advisors, individual scientists, individual fishery manager).
Management authority
Bold decision
Fishermen

15. The result of fishery management today

16. What we could be aiming for
All parties involved in fishery management share an ultimate common objective of protecting the resource. None of the parties interested in fishery management openly pursue the objective of depleting the resource (except in the case of some pests).
The fishery management process should aim at resolving issues and conflicts between interested parties. In actual fact, many fishery management processes are a source of conflict rather than a means of resolving them.

17. In Summary My contribution to the Forum’s objective are:
The modern concept of sustainability has four components: bio-ecological, socio-economic, community, institutional (objective A, multidisciplinary).
Each component should receive proportionate attention, fishery management systems focussed exclusively on one of the components can be expected to fail (and they have) (Objective B, why fishery management fails)
Parties involved in fishery management have more to gain from cooperation than from fighting