Marine Protected Areas
as tools for
Fisheries
management and conservation

Home
Wednesday, 17 July 2024
WP6 Management tools – Policy proposals Print E-mail

This work-package is devoted to proportionate guidelines and tools to be integrated into the decision-making and management process, to constitute an improved basis for the design, the selection and the management of protected areas, in order to identify the relationships between management and protection initiatives and their effects on biodiversity and fish and invertebrate stocks, as well as to propose management plans and tools to harmonize fisheries, other productive uses, and conservation. In addition, this WP aims at identifying effective fisheries management frameworks by integrating the establishment of protected areas with other management tools, e.g. input restrictions, other technical measures, output limitation, fishing vessel limitation.

   A decision support tool will be developed to enable more comprehensive incorporation of the wider effects of fishing within management decisions. This tool and the preceding models will be brought together in a Stakeholder Workshop (W3). A management manual for decision makers and an interactive website will be produced to ensure that the results are readily available, to aid transfer of these techniques to other areas, and to assist the formation of future fisheries regulation. Management decisions can not be based solely on such a partial analysis, and it is recognised that policy makers will not always accept an analysis based on economic values alone, so a more comprehensive multi-criteria decision support tool will be developed, based on the existing proven decision support tool DEFINITE. This model is suitable because it is designed to use the results of experiments in complex decision environments involving many objectives and/or many participants. It is essentially participatory, so the tool will be implemented using a facilitated stakeholder workshop. This will involve the RUG (see above), scientific partners, other scientists from national research institutions, representatives of fishers and where relevant recreational users, representatives of the relevant DGs and national Ministries, other managers, and other interested stakeholders. The workshop will aid in establishing model parameters, valuations and exploring management issues within this workpackage. A management manual will be produced to set the results of the ecological modelling and economic analysis in the context of the current fisheries policy and regulatory framework, as management issues will extend beyond changes in fishing effort and yield. The manual will be developed to ensure that the results are readily available, and transferable to other areas, to assist the formation of future fisheries regulation, and to provide guidelines for applying the methodology to other marine areas. An interactive website will allow stakeholders to explore the models, the decision tool and the consequences of varying assumptions and parameters.

European Union
Sixth Framework Programme