The Regional Advisory Councils: What is Their Potential to Incorporate Stakeholder Knowledge into Fisheries Governance?

Abstract

The protection of the Baltic Sea ecosystem is exacerbated by the social, environmental and economic complexities of governing European fisheries. Increased stakeholder participation and knowledge integration are suggested to improve the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), suffering from legitimacy, credibility and compliance problems. As a result, the CFP was revised in 2002 to involve fisheries representatives, NGOs and other stakeholders through so called Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) in the policy process. We address the RAC's task to incorporate stakeholder knowledge into the EU's fisheries governance system in empirical and theoretical perspectives. Drawing on a four-stage governance concept we subsequently suggest that a basic problem is a mismatch between participation purpose (knowledge inclusion) and the governance stage at which RACs are formally positioned (evaluation of management proposals). We conclude that, if the aim is to broaden the knowledge base of fisheries management, stakeholders need to be included earlier in the governance process.

What does stakeholder involvement mean for fisheries management?

“…The 2002 reform introduced RACs (Council Regulation 2002) with representatives from the industry and other organizations including NGOs, sport clubs, fishers' welfare organizations, and community organizations; and the 2012 reform stressed the importance of giving the fishing industry greater influence in and responsibility for fisheries management (Commission of European Communities 2009). The idea behind the establishment of the RACs is that greater stakeholder involvement will bring in a larger variety of interests and expertise from the field, connected to fisheries activities, thus giving the fisheries management greater legitimacy (Arnstein 1969, Raakjaer and Vedsmand 1995, Degnbol et al 2006, de Vos and Tatenhove 2011, Linke et al 2011, Phillipson and Symes 2013. However, one may question whether the composition of the RACs, based on belonging to one of two predefined stakeholder groups, i.e., industry and NGOs, secures a broader representation of preferences.…”

“…First, local ecological knowledge can complement limited scientific information; thus, the participation of new stakeholders in the management process can improve the knowledge base (Berkes et al 2000, Davis and Wagner 2003, Wieber et al 2004, Gassalla and Diegues 2011, Linke et al 2011, Röckmann et al 2012, Haapasaari et al 2013) and reveal new information to the regulators. Second, including stakeholders in management is expected to increase the legitimacy of the management by creating understanding and support among the stakeholders for the management measures such as new regulations (Raakjaer and Vedsmand 1995, Degnbol et al 2006, de Vos and Tatenhove 2011, Haapasaari et al 2013.…”

Coping with Complexity, Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Risk Governance: A Synthesis

“…Linke et al (2011) as well as Rodin (2011) refer explicitly to the IRGC risk governance model. Other articles link their analysis to the theoretical framework of political regimes (Hassler 2011); multi-level governance (Assmuth 2011;Hammer et al 2011) or a combination of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity (Assmuth 2011;Garrelts and Lange 2011;Karlsson et al 2011;Pihlajamäki and Tynkkynen 2011).…”

“…They describe the risks as being complex, uncertain, and fragile with the possibility of leading to a collapse of the ecosystem that would affect many sectors of society. In addition, the paper by Linke et al (2011) refers several times to special features of systemic risks such transboundary ramifications and complex causal structures.…”

“…Hammer et al (2011) emphasized the need for a multi-level governance system, which is capable of integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches. Linke et al (2011) highlighted the importance of evaluation of risk as a separate phase in the risk governance process while Jönsson (2011) illustrated the crucial function of framing for gaining a better understanding of the media discourse about risk. All these analyses and case studies underline the need to enrich the classic risk governance model by adding two additional stages dealing with risk characterization/evaluation and pre-assessment (or framing) (IRGC 2005;Renn 2008).…”