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. 2018 Oct 30;115(44):11221-11225.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1807677115. Epub 2018 Sep 24.

Three pillars of sustainability in fisheries

Frank Asche  1   2   3 , Taryn M Garlock  2 , James L Anderson  2   4 , Simon R Bush  5 , Martin D Smith  6 , Christopher M Anderson  7 , Jingjie Chu  8 , Karen A Garrett  2   9 , Audun Lem  10 , Kai Lorenzen  11 , Atle Oglend  3 , Sigbjørn Tveteras  3 , Stefania Vannuccini  10
Affiliations

Three pillars of sustainability in fisheries

Frank Asche et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Sustainability of global fisheries is a growing concern. The United Nations has identified three pillars of sustainability: economic development, social development, and environmental protection. The fisheries literature suggests that there are two key trade-offs among these pillars of sustainability. First, poor ecological health of a fishery reduces economic profits for fishers, and second, economic profitability of individual fishers undermines the social objectives of fishing communities. Although recent research has shown that management can reconcile ecological and economic objectives, there are lingering concerns about achieving positive social outcomes. We examined trade-offs among the three pillars of sustainability by analyzing the Fishery Performance Indicators, a unique dataset that scores 121 distinct fishery systems worldwide on 68 metrics categorized by social, economic, or ecological outcomes. For each of the 121 fishery systems, we averaged the outcome measures to create overall scores for economic, ecological, and social performance. We analyzed the scores and found that they were positively associated in the full sample. We divided the data into subsamples that correspond to fisheries management systems with three categories of access-open access, access rights, and harvest rights-and performed a similar analysis. Our results show that economic, social, and ecological objectives are at worst independent and are mutually reinforcing in both types of managed fisheries. The implication is that rights-based management systems should not be rejected on the basis of potentially negative social outcomes; instead, social considerations should be addressed in the design of these systems.

Keywords: economic; environmental; seafood; social; sustainability.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statement: This work received funding from the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. Several of the data points were obtained from funded projects, but the research did not involve analysis of the database itself.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Case study fisheries assessed with the FPIs (n = 121).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Correlations of FPIs by management system: open access (n = 24) (green), access rights (n = 97, of which 71 are limited entry only) (blue), and harvest rights (catch shares; n = 26) (red). For open access fisheries, all correlation coefficients are statistically insignificant. For fisheries regulated with access rights, all correlation coefficients are statistically significant. For fisheries regulated with harvest rights, all correlation coefficients are statistically significant, with the exception of the relationship between ecology and community (Tables 1 and 2).
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Mean scores in FPI dimensions by management system.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Strengthening sustainability through data.
    Webster DG. Webster DG. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Oct 30;115(44):11118-11120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1816077115. Epub 2018 Oct 19. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018. PMID: 30341223 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

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