Recommendations for full-spectrum sustainability in Canadian lobster integrated management plans based on a socioeconomic analysis of Barrington, Nova Scotia

Abstract

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has developed integrated fisheries management plans to promote a more holistic approach to fisheries management. Yet these management plans maintain an emphasis on the ecological domains, without sufficient attention to socioeconomic and institutional domains of management. In this study, I use a case study from Barrington, Nova Scotia, and dimensions from the Canadian Fisheries Research Network Comprehensive Sustainability Framework to demonstrate the importance of socioeconomic and institutional indicators to contribute to fisheries management plans. An analysis of survey data of captains and lobster fishing households revealed decreased access to multiple species fishing strategies, partially because of large inequities in access to individual fishing quotas. Harvesters with a high dependence on lobster as the primary source of income had lower incomes, and higher income sensitivity to the financial crisis of 2008. New strategies have emerged to cope with reduced access to multiple species, and high-yield lobster fishing is often the best available strategy to pay bills and meet costs when lobster prices are low. Outcomes for the region were split, with an equal number of harvesters reporting recent years as the best or worst year they experienced in fishing. Given a history of changing regulations and reduced options to remain flexible when economic and ecological conditions change, harvesters were pessimistic about their future access, and their children's future access, to fisheries. Harvesters faced livelihood challenges caused by cumulative effects of multiple regulatory and ecological events. I demonstrate how the Canadian Fisheries Research Network Comprehensive Sustainability Framework can guide researchers, managers, and fishing organizations to understand the current management objectives that are not being met, and to develop research priorities, methods, protocols, and personnel to meet a broader spectrum of objectives.

Full-spectrum sustainability: an alternative to fisheries management panaceas

“…The paper identifies remedial actions government could take to improve transparency and prevent price distortions. Barnett (2018) engages the CFRN full-spectrum sustainability assessment framework through an analysis of a case study from Barrington, Nova Scotia, where fishing households and enterprises have become significantly dependent upon lobster in a context of changing species abundance and changing access relations. Barnett uses a survey of captains and fishing households connected to lobster fisheries to examine changing distribution of access and benefits and identifies perceptions of future access.…”

“…The inclusion of governance and social considerations into research projects was spurred both by research into existing Canadian policy statements and by the active participation of social scientists, government scientists, and fishing industry representatives in research design workshops, a coconstruction approach in which the independent owneroperator sector of eastern Canada's small-scale fishery fleet played a central role. A key contribution of this special feature is thus highlighting the importance of governance/institutional processes (Parlee and Wiber 2018, Angel et al 2019, Jones and Stephenson 2019 and the distribution of resource access and benefits ( Barnett 2018, Edwards and Pinkerton 2019, Mussels and Stephenson 2020. Overall, the research experience reveals several overarching critical and ongoing challenges:…”

An indicator framework to support comprehensive approaches to sustainable fisheries management

“…It can be used as a facilitation tool and organizing structure to identify and define management objectives. It can also be applied to discuss and debate inevitable, yet often only implicitly addressed issues such as trade-offs, cumulative impacts, the governance of governance (Kooiman and Jentoft 2009), and the interaction among policies (for interaction among policies see Murray et al 2010, Barnett 2018, Carruthers et al 2019. The sustainability indicator framework does not tell managers what the sum of all activities will be or how to make trade-offs.…”

“…A significant shortcoming of most existing approaches to sustainable fisheries management is the narrow definition of sustainability. Although in theory sustainability should include social, cultural, institutional, and ethical dimensions of fisheries, too often the scope of sustainability in fisheries is limited to a small set of biological and economic considerations (Stephenson et al 2018, also see Barnett 2018. This is true in spite of more than 40 years of practical and academic work on integrated systems of management in fisheries (see Charles 2001 for a comprehensive overview of systems approaches to fisheries).…”

Applying a social-ecological well-being approach to enhance opportunities for marine protected area governance

“…The Canadian government is currently prioritizing marine conservation by expanding its network of MPAs (Office of the Prime Minister of Canada 2015, 2018) and reviewing relevant oceans and fisheries legislation to incorporate stronger environmental protections (e.g., Parliament of Canada 2017, Bujold and Simon 2018, Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans [FOPO] 2018. However, these activities are occurring alongside decreasing trends in fishery access for coastal communities ( Barnett 2018, Bennett et al 2018 and heightened awareness of the social impacts of conservation initiatives. This research is a timely contribution to the Canadian marine conservation policy context and also to broader debates about the challenges of aligning international and national conservation priorities with local social and ecological realities.…”