Operational tools and adaptive management

The push for MSC certification in specific fisheries also influences the fisheries stakeholders,
and their interactions with national fisheries managers. These two approaches for inclusion of
environmental concerns in fisheries may secure greater legitimacy and acceptance amongst
fisheries interests with regards to regulations implemented.
The role of the ENGOs is of special interest. The ENGO community is a heterogenous
community, reflected by the way they work in order to achieve marine environmental
objectives. However, by focussing upon some types of fishing activities as having the most
damaging effect upon the marine environment, these groups directly affect behaviour of the
fisheries sector. Some ENGOs work solely at the level of policy makers, exerting pressure
upon authorities in their formulation of directives, rules and regulations affecting the
environment. These ENGOs have typically chosen an exogenous way in their effort to try to
influence the fisheries environmentally. Other ENGOs utilise “green” preferences among
consumers, expressed in a willingness to pay for sustainably harvested food and safe food,
and organise campaigns directed towards consumers in order to induce them to boycott fish
from for instance unsustainable fisheries. An alternative is that they offer fisheries, that fulfil
conditions for sustainable harvesting, a certificate which is reliable in the market and thus
secure higher prices and/or larger markets. The most prominent example here is the MSC.
These are examples of how to affect the fisheries environmentally in an endogenous way.
Previously, in section 3, we identified three interests that stakeholder groups such as EUauthorities,
national authorities, ENGOs and the fishers hold towards the fishery activity.
These interests are;
- environmental (ecosystem health, healthy fish stocks, sufficiently large stocks)
- economic (profitability, efficiency, rent extraction)
- social (employment, community development)
Further, we assumed that each of these interest groups has an objective function or goal
consisting of a weighted combination of the three interests, and where the weights typically
will vary between the groups. We formulated such an objective function as follows:
U
g
g
1
ENV
g
2
ECO
g
3
SOC
g
EU,
MS,
F,
NGO
where U g is the utility (well-being) of interest group g, ENV is the environmental interest,
ECO is the economic interest, and SOC is the socio-economic interest. Assuming that
g g g
g,
1 2 3 1,
the parameters λ1 g , λ2 g , and λ3 g can be interpreted as the relative
weight interest group g attaches to the environmental interests, to economic interests, and to
social interests respectively.
Obviously, these interests and their relative weight do not only vary across different
stakeholder groups, for one and the same stakeholder they probably also change over time.
One way to interpret such changes over time, at least for stakeholder groups as authorities and
NGOs, is to observe which measures they take or use towards the fisheries in order to affect
the fishers‟ behaviour. In section 3 we presented the different measures most commonly
applied in the CFP and by national authorities, and in section 4 we transformed all measures
into economic terms, representing either a tax, which makes the use of effort more expensive
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