Successful, commonly accepted fisheries management needs economics! Establishing successful and commonly accepted fisheries management rules is a key issue for the future sustainable use of the world ocean’s living resources. My work aims at rebuilding such a fishery policy, by combining economics, natural sciences, and social sciences, leading to the construction of integrated ecological-economic tools for holistic fisheries management. The major focus is not only to maximize economic profits but to consider equally important conservation and social equity goals in the context of multispecies and ecosystem-based management.
Pathways towards ocean sustainability: Management concepts for Baltic fisheries
The project investigates concepts of ocean sustainability and governance using the example of fisheries as an economic activity influencing the ecosystem. It will derive management concepts, which balance ecological and economic needs. The project applies multi-species fisheries economic-ecological models, extending the view by exchange and feed-back with ecosystem models, and taking into account ocean change. The major aims are to (i) define managements objectives in a changing ecosystem, accounting for economic, distributional and governance issues, (ii) perform multi-species fishery model optimizations according to the defined objectives, including exchange and feed-back with an ecosystem model, to derive management rules best accounting for the ecological and economic needs, an (iii) address ocean change by including climate change scenarios and species adaptation/fisheries induced evolution in the model runs. The suggested work continues to apply models successfully developed in phase 1, builds on running as well as applied-for international projects and bridges to work to be continued in phase 2 of the cluster. Due to its strong inter- and trans-disciplinary character as well as its international embedding, the work will enhance the internal networking and international visibility of „Future Ocean“.
Establishing successful and commonly accepted fisheries management rules is a key issue for the future sustainable use of the world ocean’s living resources. Worldwide approximately 500 million people are directly dependent on fisheries for earning their livelihood (FAO, 2012). A growing world population in combination with an increasing population concentration at the coasts is likely to further exacerbate problems linked to poor management of marine resources. The work aims at designing a successful, sustainable and commonly accepted fishery policy, by combining insights and principles of natural and social sciences, notably economics and sociology. The successful work from cluster phase one will be continued to develop and integrate ecological-economic tools in holistic fisheries management. Fisheries management has reached different levels of complexity worldwide, ranging from no regulation at all on the one hand side to very complex attempts of ecosystem-based management on the other hand. Taking this into account, the project will address these levels and try to bring in ecological-economic considerations to ‘real life’ management on three levels: - Ecological-economics and single-species management (e.g. improving standard status quo European fisheries), - Ecological-economics and multi-species management (e.g. enhancing the currently most advanced European regulation systems, like in the Baltic Sea), - Ecological-economics and ecosystem-based management (‘dreams of the future’ in European fisheries)
Of fish and men: Integrated fisheries management solutions to secure sustainable marine food production
The world’s fish stocks are increasingly under pressure, not only due to climate change effects, but also due to socio-economic development, leading to a worldwide increased demand for fish. Currently, many of the world fisheries are still in a bad shape, causing both ecological and socio-economic problems. One major reason is failing fisheries management, allowing for too generous catch opportunities, while disregarding ecological-economic feedback dynamics. The proposed postdoc project adds new aspects to my overall research agenda of developing integrated, sustainable fisheries management solutions, and addresses the clusters’ thematic areas of “Ocean Pressures” and “Ocean Prosperity”. I will improve and apply cutting-edge ecological-economic models based on newly available data that enable a necessary innovation in inter-and trans-disciplinary fisheries management: input from global bio-geochemical models, global databases on fishing activity (Global Fishing Watch), regionalized Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and observations from behavioral-economic experiments, which I will use in addition to regional socio-economic data and international fisheries assessment databases,. My research aims to inform ‘on the ground’ management applications. I will focus on (i) global pressures, and (ii) the human dimension impacting fisheries management decisions, in order to (iii) develop regional solutions for a sustainable, fair, and transparent future in marine fisheries. This work will be done in close collaboration with leading scientists from within as well as outside the cluster. My work will contribute towards the development of ecosystem-based fisheries management, and finally UNDP Sustainable Development Goals 2 (Zero Hunger), and 14 (Life below Water).
