The Fishery Performance Indicators: A New Instrument for Assessing Sustainability of World Fisheries

It has been estimated that world fisheries fall short of their potential earnings by US$50–80 billion a year, with losses resulting not only from foregone catch due to overfishing, but also excessive harvest cost, low... [ view full abstract ]

It has been estimated that world fisheries fall short of their potential earnings by US$50–80 billion a year, with losses resulting not only from foregone catch due to overfishing, but also excessive harvest cost, low processing yields, product waste, and a failure to reach the highest value markets. The result is lost income to small-scale and industrial harvesters and processors, foregone high quality protein to consumers, and reduced food and income security for fishing dependent communities in both developed and developing regions.  Despite the need to understand how to best manage fisheries to capture the foregone benefits, research on global fisheries performance emphasizes primarily the effects of biological management on stock and ecological conditions. While fisheries cannot be sustainable with degraded target stocks, high stock levels will not necessarily lead to an economically healthy industry that can support the community in which it resides.  Resolving this social dilemma requires identifying whether and how fisheries are supporting the people who participate in them, and understanding how management influences human outcomes.  To this end, the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs) were developed by a group of U.S. academic economists as a rapid assessment instrument designed to capture how fishery resources are contributing to the wellbeing of the people and communities that depend on them, and to document factors supporting wealth generation.  It includes 67 measures to assess wealth accumulation on 11 dimensions of stock, harvest industry performance, and post-harvest industry performance; and 54 measures of enabling factors – including management and governance – to associate with variation in outcomes. The researcher’s task is to score each measure accurately, but not necessarily precisely, and to track the degree of confidence in each measure’s score.  Each measure is scored on a one-to-five scale using data where possible, but relying primarily on nonquantitative factors that can be scored by experts in any fishery or fishery sector. This feature makes it particularly well suited to applications in data-poor countries or industry sectors.  Among the questions the FPIs can help answer are: How well is a fisheries management system working?  What are the key factors influencing success (or failure)?  What are key investments that should be considered in order to promote successful fisheries management reform?  Based initially on 61 fishery case studies drawn from industrial and developing countries around the world, the FPI database has expanded to include nearly 120 case studies since the landmark publication was released in May 2015.  This presentation will provide recent applications of the FPIs that illustrate their potential towards improving the economic, community and ecological sustainability of world fisheries.