1.As the most widespread and pervasive form of maritime
activity, fishing is considered the prime suspect in regard to the
progressive degradation of the marine environment. The aim of the
report is to consider the opportunities for a closer integration of
policies for marine environmental management and fisheries
management, paying particular attention to the need to remodel the
institutional frameworks for fisheries management.
2. Existing management systems - international commissions,
the EC's Common Fisheries Policy and the national fisheries
administrations - are ill-adapted to take reasonable account of the
needs for environmental management and marine wildlife
conservation. The CFP is essentially a technocratic, 'command and
control' system reliant upon top: down modes of delivery and with
little scope for user group participation in the policy process.
Except for the territorial waters (0-12 nm), which remains within
the control of the individual Member State, management
responsibility is divided between the European Community (policy
formulation) and the Member State (policy implementation).
Delegated management responsibility occurs in the UK through
producers' organisations (sectoral quotas) and Sea Fisheries
Committees (inshore fisheries management, in England and Wales
only).
3. The state of the stocks in the seas surrounding the UK is,
for the most part, in a seriously overexploited condition with a
majority of the stocks of commercially important species currently
outside or at least close to their safe biological limits. At
existing levels of fishing effort there is little expectation of a
sustained recovery to a situation which would guarantee the long
term sustainability of stocks and catch levels. The UK fishing
industry has witnessed a significant decline in total catches over
the past 25 years due to a combination of limited access to distant
water fishing grounds and declining stock levels in domestic
waters. Employment in the catching sector has fallen by 11% over
the same period.
4. The impacts of intensive fishing activity extend beyond the
depletion of the fish stocks themselves. The cumulative effects of
a long continuous history of fishing activity are severe, though
the greatest changes to the ecosystem were probably effected in the
initial stages. Four types of impact are identified: the effects on
benthic habitats and fauna caused by the abrasive contact of
fishing gears with the seabed, especially severe in the case of
beam trawling and shellfish dredging; effects on non-benthic fauna
viz. seabirds and cetaceans; the effects on community structures
with high rates of removal of both target and non-target species,
though only very rarely leading to the collapse of populations; and
the effects on trophic interactions, with particular attention paid
to the competition between man and seabird populations implicit in
the industrial fishery for sandeels in the North Sea.
5. No single regulatory measure can hope to solve all issues
relating to the overexploitation of resources or the ecosystem
effects: a judicious combination is required. Although designed to
constrain fishing effort, many regulatory measures currently used
in fisheries management, if properly implemented, can exert a
beneficial impact on the marine ecosystem. These measures are
divided into four groups: those intended to restrain the growth in
fishing effort, including structural policies, licensing and effort
quotas; those intended to limit output - principally, the largely
discredited system of TACs and catch quotas with variations in
quota allocation systems; those intended to improve the selectivity
of fishing gears, including mesh sizes and separator panels or
grids; and those to protect specific populations or sites, mainly
in the form of seasonal closures of fishing grounds. The
implementation of such measures will depend on several criteria
including their relevance, enforceability, perceived legitimacy,
cost effectiveness and distributional effects.
6. Concern for the state of the marine ecosystem has prompted
a revival of the concept of ecosystem management structured
according to the precautionary principle. Despite the fact that
they have been widely endorsed in international protocols, neither
of the concepts has been sufficiently developed to a point where
they are capable of being operationalised. Ecosystem management may
be no more than an 'evolution of management philosophy' demanding
extensions of the spatial and temporal horizons of management and,
therefore, likely to be achieved through incremental rather than
radical means. One urgent need is to develop clear procedures for
implementing a precautionary approach to the exploitation of all
commercial fish stocks. Cautious consideration should be given to
the currently fashionable idea among conservation interests of
introducing large scale, permanent closure zones in the form of
Marine Protection Areas or No Take Zones. The nature of a
precautionary approach is examined in respect of two particular
issues: the newly developed deepwater fisheries along the Atlantic
Frontier and the inshore waters where the role of marine Special
Areas of Conservation is addressed.
7. In line with the premise that existing management systems
are ill adapted to the needs of sustainable ecosystems and marine
wildlife conservation, the remaining parts of the report are
concerned with identifying alternative systems capable of
integrating fisheries and ecosystem management. Failure of existing
systems is due to unstable management scope (ill defined, shifting
objectives) and the inert structures of centralised, 'command and
control' systems. In defining the objectives of integrated
management, maintenance of ecosystem integrity, diversity and
productivity is paramount; all other objectives are subservient.
The main thrust of reform is directed towards decentralisation and
devolvement and the development of participative management or
co-management. Co-management implies the involvement of
stakeholders in the formulation of policy through consultation and
in its implementation through delegated management
responsibilities. The former role is the more crucial for without a
sense of 'ownership' of the management decisions, the system may
lose legitimacy in the eyes of the user groups. The problem of
co-management - finding the correct balance of stakeholder
representation to secure sound consensus decision making - is
likely to be exacerbated with the broadening scope of integrated
management and widening the policy community to include
conservation interests. A model for integrated management in the UK
with regionally structured Advisory Panels and Area Management
Committees is outlined.
8. An opportunity to reform the system of management is
provided by the need to renew (or revise) the CFP in 2002. Although
the legal requirements cover only a narrow range of issues, the
Commission has declared an open agenda for the debate on the future
of the CFP. Institutionally, there are four options: the status
quo; a further centralisation of decision making; a reversion to
coastal state management; and regionalisation. The option which is
most likely to favour integrated management is the regionalisation
project, involving the creation of up to 8 regional Fisheries
Councils covering Community waters, responsible for making detailed
management recommendations in respect of their regional seas to be
ratified by the full Council of Ministers. Membership of the
Fisheries Councils would be confined to those countries with active
interests in the regional seas (coastal states and others with
quota allocations). Ministerial delegations from the relevant
member states would be supported by consultative groupings
involving both user groups and marine conservation interests. One
advantage of this approach would be a closer integration of the
national, European and international scales of management through a
nested system of regions.
9. The concluding section of the report contains
recommendations in relation to the institutional framework for
integrated management, the precautionary approach and the
combination of regulatory measures. It is suggested that the
conservation agencies should work to achieve their goals through an
integrated system of management rather than the creation of an
alternative agenda and the enactment of a separate code of
regulation.