Inland fish and fisheries are globally important to environmental function and human services, yet their persistent lack of recognition in global agreements, especially multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), may hinder progress towards biodiversity conservation and human well-being. The connection between inland fish, fisheries, and their ecosystems means that addressing the needs of fish directly offers opportunities to meet multiple global commitments and provide indicators of progress towards many global goals. In this perspective, we highlight opportunities to better integrate inland fish and fisheries into MEAs, specifically the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Convention on Wetlands (commonly known as the Ramsar Convention), Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and World Heritage Convention (WHC). Greater attention on inland fish and fisheries through MEAs could help ensure more holistic planning, investment, and conservation of these important fish and fisheries, their biodiversity, the essential resources they provision, and the environments they inhabit.

This paper summarizes the outcomes of the recent Illuminating Hidden Harvests (IHH) Small-scale (SSF) Training Workshop and Panel Discussion, an event focused on the development of a comprehensive curriculum for SSF for use by the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences (DoFAS) at the University of Liberia (UL). Organized with the support of the Liberia Sustainable Management of Fisheries Project funded by the World Bank through the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority (NaFAA), Duke University, FAO, and Conservation International (CI), this workshop aimed to enhance Liberia’s capacity on sustainable fisheries management by building a robust SSF curriculum within DoFAS. Participants explored key challenges facing the SSF sector in Liberia, including gaps in data collection, policy alignment, and the integration of local knowledge into fisheries management practices. The workshop produced a proposed curriculum outline that addresses critical areas, such as evidence-based management, human rights, and sustainable resource use. The potential elements of the curriculum adopted at the workshop include: definitions and characterization matrix of SSF, human rights-based approach to SSF, understanding the societal importance of SSF, governance of SSF, economic viability of SSF, role of gender in SSF, climate change effects on SSF, and SSF interactions with large-scale fisheries. The recommendations which emerged from the workshop are that: (i) DoFAS at the UL and NaFAA, in partnership with Duke University, FAO, CI and other relevant stakeholders, develop and implement this SSF curriculum with a strong emphasis on sustainable practices, evidence-based decision-making, and community engagement, and (ii) ongoing collaboration between academia, government, and local communities to support policy formulation and the sustainable growth of Liberia’s SSF sector be encouraged. This initiative marks a significant step toward building a fisheries workforce equipped to protect and enhance Liberia’s marine resources.

Inland fisheries in South and Southeast Asia represent important sources of food, and many are extensively stocked. Stocking often catalyses wider changes in inland fisheries is considered in this context. Stocking can be beneficial, providing additional sources of food, incentives to manage, and income-generating opportunities. However, there are also identifiable risks: stocking can be used to avoid or ignore addressing reasons underlying the degradation of inland fisheries and economic development, tenure arrangements, and culture technologies involved in stocking can combine to transform the very nature of inland fisheries. These transformations can degrade environments and alter the nature and distribution of benefits, potentially marginalising and impoverishing fishers. There is consequently a need to consider and assess more explicitly in advance the implications of stocking for the nature and distribution of social and environmental costs and benefits, and the risks related to access to, and availability of, food.

Harmful fisheries subsidies contribute to overfishing leading to environmental and societal impacts. If only fisheries and ecosystems within the subsidising nations' jurisdiction were affected, then unilateral actions might be sufficient to help safeguard our ocean and the people reliant upon it. However, just as fish move between jurisdictions, so too do the subsidised fishing fleets that target them. As such, the impacts and solutions to subsidies-induced overfishing are often matters of international concern. Mapping the distribution and flows of harmful subsidies is therefore key to understanding these concerns, informing multilateral reform, and empowering impacted nations to strengthen the terms of access to their waters and resources. Here we quantify the amount of harmful fisheries subsidies that supports fishing in the high seas, domestic and foreign waters. We estimate that between 20% and 37% of all harmful fisheries subsidies support fishing in foreign waters or the high seas, that is outside the jurisdictions of the subsidising nations. We show that harmful subsidies primarily originate from nations with high-Human Development Index (HDI), strong fisheries management capacity and relatively sustainable fish stocks, yet disproportionately impact nations with low or very low-HDI, lower man-agement capacity and more vulnerable fish stocks-40% of the harmful subsidies that support fishing in very low-HDI nations waters originate from high-HDI and very-high HDI nations. We show that Asia, Europe, and North America, are net subsidy sources; they provide more harmful subsidies to their fishing fleets than their respective ecosystems are impacted by; while Africa, South, Central America and Caribbean, and Oceania are net subsidy-sinks. This discrepancy between the source of harmful subsidies and the nations that are ultimately impacted is unsustainable and unjust. Prohibiting all harmful subsidies to distant-water fishing and fishing in the high seas-with narrow exceptions for Small Island Developing States-should be prioritised to support the advancement of sustainable and equitable fisheries worldwide.

This paper addresses why food security implications of projected losses to inland capture fisheries due to hydropower development have been neglected in policy arenas. Drawing on the case of the Lower Mekong Basin, this paper applies a conceptual framework for analyzing this question as a case of fundamental food system change. Four inter-related axes of change - narratives, actors, institutions and resources - constitute the framework for analyzing and challenging the dynamics and values of food systems change. Despite substantial scientific evidence on the nutritional and food security significance of the fisheries, and the magnitude of negative impacts of planned hydropower development, there has been no discernible shift in hydropower investment and related policy. The lack of attention to this food production loss is due to a broader transformation in food systems, itself shaped by powerful interests and values. Addressing the neglect of fisheries requires challenging this trajectory of food system change.

Aim: To demonstrate the societal values of inland fishes through nine services provided by inland fishes. Each service is defined, key stakeholders identified, and threats enumerated. Diverse case studies (geography, taxonomy, fishery-type) provide examples to highlight the societal values around the world. Main concepts: Nine societal services of inland fishes – 1. Livelihoods and subsistence income; 2. Commercial income; 3. Food and nutrition; 4. Recreational services; 5. Cultural services; 6. Educational and scientific opportunities within fisheries; 7. Biodiversity and ecosystem function; 8. Regulation and indicator of freshwater quality; and 9. Regulation of freshwater quantity and natural flow regimes. Conclusion/outlook: Inland fishes have immense social, economic, and ecological importance. Freshwater ecosystems face a diverse array of pressures that threaten the fulfillment of societal services. Addressing key knowledge gaps can assist with sustainable management and conservation of these important resources.

In 2016, an application was prepared by the Malawian government for the Elephant Marsh on the Shire River to be granted RAMSAR status. As part of the support for that application and to help guide the resulting management plan, the eco-social holistic environmental flow assessment model DRIFT was set up for the Marsh. The aim was to predict the response of the Marsh to scenarios of changing water and sediment inflows, and to different levels of harvesting of its natural resources, in order to identify threats to and viable options for sustaining its biodiversity. The results of the DRIFT assessment provided three main points of guidance for the RAMSAR application and the subsequent development of a management plan. First, it was shown the Marsh has been fairly resilient to short-term changes in the inflows of water and sediments, having endured significant fluctuations in both in its history, and was able to recover in terms of biodiversity from extreme dry periods. Second, it was revealed that conservation efforts to protect biodiversity should concentrate on the central, eastern and southern areas, as they were less vulnerable to decreases in water flows than the other areas of the Marsh. Third, restricting access to some parts of the Marsh, in particular the core eastern, central and southern areas, could markedly improve its overall condition, increase many of its resources and improve its resilience to Climate Change. Of the access restrictions assessed, the greatest benefit to the ecological integrity of the Marsh would be achieved if all access to the central area was stopped, and if access to the eastern and southern areas was reduced to 50% of the 2014 baseline levels.

Fish from marine and inland capture fisheries is an important food that contributes significantly to diets and health, but their contribution is somewhat overlooked in food security and poverty-related policies. Given the current numbers of malnourished people globally, there is a pressing need to consider how to better realize the potential of fish in food systems that can address malnourishment. To do so, we re-examine the fisheries literature from the perspective of food systems. Starting with nutritional needs and considering how these may be met through local food systems reveals an ongoing transformation that has implications for small-scale fisheries, as increasingly become part of globalized food systems. We describe the factors that can change the nature of production, mediate access to fish and the distribution of benefits that can lead to impoverishment. This emphasizes the governance challenges that lie at the heart of complex, contested and increasingly globalized food systems, in which actors interact to shape the systems, determining who benefits and how. We draw attention to critical issues of access, power and the values and norms that underpin efforts to manage and transform fisheries, exposing the unequal struggle to secure access that small-scale fishers and poor people must endure. We suggest a vital challenge for fisheries management is to engage with this struggle and develop policies and management measures that would enable fisheries to make positive contributions to food systems and nutritional security, while meeting global sustainable development objectives.

The Mekong region is experiencing rapid economic and social change, frequently presented as transitioning from an agricultural to industrial economy. Investment in large-scale hydropower development is central to this strategy, in which small-scale fisheries are most at risk. Small-scale fisheries in the region represent up to 17% of global inland fisheries production, providing between 27% and 78% of animal protein in rural diets. Despite the high importance of fisheries, they frequently appear within regional debates as facing a very bleak future under practically any circumstances. Lacking a significant role within future development scenarios, fisheries become framed as a subject for conservation and protection in the face of inevitable change. The resulting focus is one of minimizing and mitigating the impacts of regional economic development and increasing restrictions within fisheries. From this starting point, the future of small-scale fisheries lies in reducing access and transitioning fishers into other 'more viable' economic activities. This dominant framing is considered from a Blue Justice perspective, focusing on knowledge production and the contributions of fisheries science to regional development debates. At this critical juncture, these debates reveal that alternative perspectives and processes of knowledge generation are needed that present the developmental contributions and opportunities represented by small-scale fisheries. Approaches are also required that can challenge the exclusion and marginalization of small-scale fishers, opening the possibility for more socially just research agendas. These changes would enable small-scale fishers to participate in debates, represent their interests, and restore their rights.

The impacts of fisheries on ocean resources are no longer considered in isolation but should account for broader ecosystem effects. However, ongoing ecosystem-wide changes added to the inherent dynamics of marine ecosystems, create challenges for fisheries and fisheries management by affecting our ability to ensure future fishing opportunities and sustainable use of the seas. By reviewing a corpus of fisheries science literature, we contribute to informing managers and policymakers with considerations of the various threats to fisheries and the marine ecosystems that support them. We identify and describe 25 ecosystem challenges and 7 prominent families of management options to address them. We capture the challenges acting within three broad categories: (i) fishing impacts on the marine environments and future fishing opportunities, (ii) effects of environmental conditions on fish and fishing opportunities, and (iii) effects of context in terms of socioeconomics, fisheries management, and institutional set-up on fisheries. Our review shows that, while most EU fisheries are facing a similar array of challenges, some of them are specific to regions or individual fisheries. This is reflected in selected regional cases taking different perspectives to exemplify the challenges along with fishery-specific cases. These cases include the dramatic situation of the Baltic Sea cod, facing an array of cumulative pressures, the multiple and moving ecosystem interactions that rely on the North Sea forage fish facing climate change, the interaction of fishing and fish stocks in a fluctuating mixed fishery in the Celtic Sea, the bycatch of marine mammals and seabirds and habitat degradation in the Bay of Biscay, and finally the under capacity and lack of fundamental knowledge on some features of the EU Outermost Regions. In addition to these ecoregion specific findings, we discuss the outcomes of our review across the whole of European waters and we conclude by recognizing that there are knowledge gaps regarding the direction of causality, nonlinear responses, and confounding effects. All of the challenges we identify and characterize may guide further data collection and research coordination to improve our fundamental understanding of the system and to monitor real changes within it, both of which are required to inform an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM). An European EAFM could build upon an array of management measures currently tailored for fisheries management only, including promoting funding interdisciplinary research and ecosystem monitoring. Such integrative management should reduce uncertainties in environmental, social and economic trends, and lower the risk for disruptive events or ecosystem effects with far-reaching consequences, including a shift toward less productive marine ecosystems.

Hydropower development can result in both environmental and social change. Modification of riparian environments and the creation of storage reservoirs can alter fish assemblages, change access arrangements and create new opportunities within and outside fishing. These opportunities may be perceived differently by different stakeholders, leading to changes in the fishery and, ultimately, with implications for the nature and distribution of benefits from the fishery. Focusing on a trap fishery for freshwater prawnMacrobrachium vollenhovenii(Herklots), this study examines the way access arrangements changed in response to the rehabilitation of the Mount Coffee run-of-river hydropower scheme on the lower reaches of the Saint Paul River in Liberia. Through the use of interviews and limited participant observation, the study explores the responses to change resulting from the rehabilitation, highlighting the way that agency and bargaining power contributed to shaping the formation of a fisher group and the new access arrangements that they have begun to develop.

Open access fisheries, in which the right to catch fish is available to all, is frequently identified as a fundamentally problematic situation. Given recent recognition of the extent and significance of small-scale fisheries and fisheries in developing countries it is worth examining how fundamental or universal the problem of open access is. There are two reasons for doing so. The first is to bring greater clarity to the debates by examining how the term is used, including ensuring that arguments of economic efficiency are not confused with arguments about resource sustainability. The second is to avoid policy prescriptions for small-scale fisheries that may have negative consequences for those dependent on these fisheries. Consideration of the mechanisms by which access is mediated in small-scale fisheries draws attention to issues of social dynamics and the role of power rather than aggregate numbers of fishers. From this perspective, not restricting who can fish may represent a viable management option for some small-scale fisheries, particularly where there are migratory fishers, seasonal waterbodies or fluctuating resources or where these resources are critical for food security. Problems in small-scale fisheries are not necessarily due to an absence of restrictions on who can fish and it is therefore important to guard against misdiagnosing a problem without explanation or evidence.

The next few months will be crucial in determining whether the world’s major fishing nations will deliver on commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies. Timing is of heightened importance given that the EU—the second-largest subsidizer—is reforming its financial instrument for fisheries. This article therefore examines the last 20 years of subsidies provided to the fisheries sector by the EU and supports discussion of the potential future for EU fisheries subsidies and the chance of success for the SDGs. Significant changes have occurred to EU fisheries subsidies during this period. Partly these changes have occurred as a result of the removal of certain capacity-enhancing subsidies and partly due to additional funds being allocated to beneficial forms of public funding. However, progress is slow and a significant amount of capacity-enhancing subsidies remain. Furthermore, the true extent of any reduction in capacity-enhancing subsidies may be shrouded by the Pollyannaish classifications of subsidization, but most disconcerting are the recent positions adopted by both the European Parliament and Council of the EU, which aim to reintroduce some of the most harmful subsidies, thereby putting the progress needed to achieve sustainable fisheries at risk.

Small‐scale fisheries are recognised as making important contributions to nutrition and economic development despite a lack of accurate quantitative information on catches and consumption. While direct measurement remains the most appropriate way of collecting such data, it is impractical at large scales. Instead, household surveys based upon informant recall of fish caught and/or consumed are frequently used. However, the accuracy of weight recall by informants (even over short recall periods) has not been established. Using data from household surveys, the accuracy and precision of catch and consumption estimates derived from: (a) asking informants to recall weights of fish caught and (b) asking respondents to recall lengths of fish caught and converting to weight were tested. Length‐based methods, using visual aids to assist recall, were more accurate, precise and correctable. These methods could be useful for catch estimation, especially where fish are processed, sold or consumed shortly after capture.

Following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014, this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition, food security, and economic growth in developing and emergent countries. In doing so we evaluate the quality and scientific rigor of that evidence, identify the key conclusions that emerge from the literature, and assess whether these conclusions are consistent across the sources. The results of the assessment show that while some specific topics are consistently and rigorously documented, thus substantiating some of the claims found in the literature, other areas of research still lack the level of disaggregated data or an appropriate methodology to reach consistency and robust conclusions. More specifically, the analysis reveals that while fish contributes undeniably to nutrition and food security, the links between fisheries/aquaculture and poverty alleviation are complex and still unclear. In particular national and household level studies on fisheries' contributions to poverty alleviation lack good conceptual models and produce inconsistent results. For aquaculture, national and household studies tend to focus on export value chains and use diverse approaches. They suggest some degree of poverty alleviation and possibly other positive outcomes for adopters, but these outcomes also depend on the small-scale farming contexts and on whether adoption was emergent or due to development assistance interventions. Impacts of fish trade on food security and poverty alleviation are ambiguous and confounded by a focus on international trade and a lack of consistent methods. The influences of major drivers (decentralization, climate change, demographic transition) are still insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood. Finally the evaluation reveals that evidence-based research and policy narratives are often disconnected, with some of the strongest and long-lasting policy narratives lacking any strong and rigorous evidence-based validation. Building on these different results, this paper identifies six key gaps facing policy-makers, development practitioners, and researchers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Inland fisheries can provide a wide range of social benefits, many of which make important contributions to both household livelihoods and national economies. These benefits and how they are created and distributed, however, are essentially social phenomena, perceived, valued and utilized by people and the social and economic worlds in which they live. Despite this, fisheries are often framed in science and policy, at least initially as an ecological issue with the resource (fish) as the starting point for investigation and the basis for recommendations for action. This chapter considers the potential for and implications of reframing fisheries from a more people-centred (social-natural) perspective.The chapter starts by summarizing the range of benefits that are derived from inland fisheries systems around the world, highlighting the importance of these to households, communities and national economies. It goes on to explore some of the issues that have emerged from ecologically led management approaches and how these have served to highlight the importance of the social aspects in practice. The chapter then goes on to examine the implications of looking at fisheries as social-natural systems. While recognizing the fundamental importance of ecological dimensions of fisheries, the interest here is in considering the social dimensions as a critical point of entry for improving conceptual understanding, management practice and governance. For this purpose, we focus on three distinct social aspects: first, we consider the discourse of fisheries management, the ways in which problems and solutions of fisheries management are usually framed in the academic and policy-related literature. Second, we consider how institutions and agency shape the norms and rules of access, utilization and distribution and how these might be supported, contested or undermined. This will highlight how, in practice, these 'social' aspects of fisheries often determine outcomes of policy and practice, resulting in outcomes that may not have been expected at the outset. This is often as a result of the policy and/or management assumptions made about the ways that people will respond to policy and practice.The chapter concludes by considering what it might mean for the management of inland fisheries systems starting from a social-natural perspective and the different opportunities and pathways that this may identify. Furthermore, we conclude with thoughts how such an approach might broaden our understanding of the challenges of fisheries management and open up potential options for addressing such challenges.

Adaptive Co-Management for Social-Ecological Complexity Author(s): Derek R. Armitage, Ryan Plummer, Fikret Berkes, Robert I. Arthur, Anthony T. Charles, Iain J. Davidson-Hunt, Alan P. Diduck, Nancy C. Doubleday, Derek S. Johnson, Melissa Marschke, Patrick McConney, Evelyn W. Pinkerton and Eva K. Wollenberg Source: Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Mar., 2009), pp. 95-102 Published by: Ecological Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595062 Accessed: 23-10-2015 16:04 UTC