Three pillars of sustainability in fisheries.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
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.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Asche, F; Garlock, TM; Anderson, JL; Bush, SR; Smith, MD; Anderson, CM; Chu, J; Garrett, KA; Lem, A; Lorenzen, K; Oglend, A; Tveteras, S; Vannuccini, S
Published Date
- October 2018
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 115 / 44
Start / End Page
- 11221 - 11225
PubMed ID
- 30249663
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC6217440
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1091-6490
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0027-8424
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1073/pnas.1807677115
Language
- eng