- Posted on 28 Feb 2024
- 15-minute read
We all understand the importance of preventing overfishing for sustainability – but our research shows that considering the social impacts of decisions about fisheries management is also crucial.
Harry Mitchelson remembers when his father used to fish the waters around Lakes Entrance in Victoria. He would catch so many fish that he could not possibly sell even a quarter of what he caught; he would throw most of it back into the sea.
“He had to catch every fish that swam in the ocean. He was driven by, if there's a fish there, he had to catch it,” Harry, a fourth-generation fisher, told us as part of our research into the economic and social contributions of professional fisheries and aquaculture in Victoria.
The sea is in Harry’s blood. Unlike his father, he understands the need not to overfish and to protect precious stocks.
But, like the hundreds of other fisher families providing fresh Australian seafood in Victoria and NSW, Harry’s way of living is under threat.
Competition for waterfront real estate and multiple demands on diminishing fish stocks are increasingly eroding the rights of owner-operator fishing businesses like Harry’s.
Areas set aside for recreational fishing are restricting fishing grounds for commercial fishing. Meanwhile, government decisions often prioritise the sustainability of fish stocks over the livelihoods of those who live off the sea, rather than treating sustainability in fisheries as having ecological, social and economic dimensions of equal weight.
Unlike farming, which uses private property land, our waterways are a public resource and fishing rights are administered by governments. Decisions on how much can be fished and how the catch is distributed are almost always made to protect fish stocks. Socioeconomic objectives are usually left as high-level goals, and not incorporated in an evidence-based manner into these decisions.
Our research is providing crucial insights into how the fishing and aquaculture industries contribute to the wellbeing of regional communities in Australia and internationally. It has highlighted the vital role of fishing for some regional economies, for economic diversity and resilience, for food supply, synergies with tourism and recreation activities, environmental knowledge, stewardship and the social fabric of communities.
In Australia, overfishing up to the 1980s meant restrictions on commercial fishing were necessary. However, some of the more recent restrictions on commercial fishing have been more in response to lobbying from recreational fishing groups, or to restructure commercial fishing away from smaller operations towards larger more profitable operations. All this can have serious consequences for families like Harry’s, reducing their ability to earn a living.
Overseas, in countries we have studied including the Philippines and Indonesia, changes to policy that impact fishing can pose a serious threat to food security and livelihoods of the huge numbers of coastal communities on the many thousands of islands making up each of these countries.
We have recently published a groundbreaking paper on this issue that argues sustainable fishing should be about more than just environmental protection.
While, of course, the ecological sustainability of fisheries is a necessity, we argue for fisheries policy tools that treat sustainability as also having social and economic dimensions.
We propose a more holistic way of managing fish supplies, by integrating social factors into the heart of fisheries management procedures - specifically ‘harvest control rules’ (HCRs).
HCRs are pre-agreed guidelines that determine what to do when catches hit a certain limit – usually based on modelling of fish stocks. They are used to enforce objectives in management plans and policies aimed at regulating fishing to maintain or rebuild fish stocks, and sometimes to protect wider ecosystem structures and processes.
There have been calls to integrate social and economic objectives with biological ones in fisheries policy for decades, but fisheries policy still usually focuses on fish stocks, with much less attention to how well fisheries are performing socially.
We propose the idea of social HCRs, which also include one or two social or economic reference points, such as employment or food security.
Social HCRs, along with broader reforms to make social and economic fisheries objectives operational and evaluate their outcomes with evidence, could ensure that policy decisions also consider relevant social considerations, such as fisher income, employment and livelihoods, quality of life, preserving communities and cultural traditions, maintaining recreational fishing access, ensuring food supply, and managing resource use.
There are multiple benefits from viewing fisheries management through a social or economic lens. It would ensure policies better align with socioeconomic objectives, and can lead to a clearer understanding of impacts on communities to open the way for possible compensation or, in some cases, allowing fishing to continue for a while.
In situations where there is over-fishing, it may seem counterintuitive that we’re proposing commercial fishing should be allowed beyond what is biologically recommended.
But the reality is that overfishing is already often allowed for social reasons – it’s just that the policy processes around these decisions are opaque. Introducing social HCRs would allow for more transparency and accountability in achieving social objectives through fishing.
Over the long term, we hope that including social considerations into HCRs would help move fisheries management beyond the assumption that biologically sustainable fisheries will bring general benefits to society, and instead explicitly recognise the benefits and losses for different groups within communities that are inherent in fish management strategies.
This would help us to manage our fisheries resources to contribute to the wellbeing of communities and society – and to the livelihoods of fisher families like Harry’s – with preventing overfishing as a part of, but not the only, goal.
Professor Kate Barclay is a social scientist researching the social aspects of fisheries, at a time when industry and government are increasingly recognising the importance of human dimensions in sustainable fisheries. She is Director of the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC).
Byline: Professor Kate Barclay