Confronting comfortable chimeras: an advisory perspective on EBFM implementation.

EBFM is central to progressive fisheries management in a changing world. My talk will highlight how we find ourselves encumbered by our legacy. It will stress the importance of evidence-informed decision-making and will consider four key chimeras of western fisheries management which must now be challenged to implement EBFM. 1. Destructive influence of balance. The notion that the ecosystem approach is about balance and holistic understanding leads to the idea of win-wins in management solutions with an overt focus on assessing status. This prevents us from highlighting threats and opportunities for managers. Solution: change the narrative to prioritisation, risk and transactional approaches. 2. Equality across management objectives. Our natural sciences training leads us to ignore the diversity of perceptions on objectives. There is an underlying assumption of homogeneity in management objectives as if all share the same intrinsic values. This leads to the notion that once you get around the table with all the evidence, trade-offs are straight forward. Solution: embrace concepts and analysis from social science and reject concepts like ‘scientific objectives’. 3. Stagnation by science. Fisheries science is our strength and our weakness. We have sold a false sense of certainty which has been embedded into legislation as rigid management frameworks (e.g. MSY, relative stability). It is easy to stall management action by calling for more data and better science. Solution: be honest and develop tools that reflect that honesty and assume change is an inherent property of all systems. 4. Blindness to governance. In the realm of EBFM, researchers’ naivety about governance is no longer acceptable. Our evidence and advice need to impact. National and international priorities and measures are shaped by complex institutional structures and bureaucratic machinery. Ministries and departments not only compete internally, but also speak with fragmented voices in global forums, usually without coordination. Solution: governance awareness training for researchers and high-level champions for systemic transformation.