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A conservation sector perspective on ESD assessment in Western Australian fisheries

Dr J.N. Dunlop

(Nic Dunlop is the Sustainable Fisheries Liaison Officer at the Conservation Council of Western Australia. His address is 2 Delhi Street, West Perth, WA, 6005).

Introduction

The current initiatives in the reporting and auditing of ESD in some Australian fishery jurisdictions are being followed with interest by the conservation sector, as are the Commonwealth’s environmental assessment processes. The WA Department of Fisheries farsighted, systematic and consultative approach in developing processes for ESD accountability has been welcomed by the conservation sector. In many ways the WA Department of Fisheries is in the vanguard of incorporating ESD reporting into renewable natural resource management and the techniques being developed for fisheries may well have applications in land & soil management, water management, forests and nature-based tourism.

The WA conservation sector understands that the processes being developed for ESD assessment will continue to evolve over time and as such we have chosen not to “die in a ditch” over what we see as the current deficiencies. Many of the problems may only be solved when other agencies and economic sectors reach a similar stage in sustainability assessment, or better mechanisms are established to provide for a “whole of government” and ecosystem-based approach to ESD.

The conservation sector has identified several problem areas with respect to the current Standing Committee for Fisheries & Agriculture (SCFA) ESD reporting and Environment Australia (EA) environmental assessment processes. These are:

a. fisheries environmental assessment and ESD reporting in the context of ecosystem-based management,

b. the use of risk assessment to cover the ecological knowledge gap,

Ecosystem-based Management

The National response to the emergence of ESD principles was organised on the basis of economic sectors (CoA 1991). This may have been a mistake because it mitigated against a systems approach to the problem. In the case of Fisheries, it is difficult to set ESD objectives in the absence of over-arching ecological objectives for marine bio-regions or aquatic/ estuarine catchments. Fisheries impose significant pressures on marine ecosystems but there are cumulative impacts from a range of anthropogenic sources. The objective setting process for ESD needs to address a range of questions that extend well beyond the historical domain of fisheries management.

a. What are the limits of acceptable anthropogenic change in the aquatic ecosystem and how can these be used to set ecosystem-level objectives?

b. To what extent should fisheries be permitted to contribute to change in aquatic ecosystems? What are the ecological objectives for fisheries? How are the acceptable levels of impact to be allocated between the sectors (eg. wild fisheries, aquaculture, marine tourism, transport, offshore petroleum) ?

c. How do the various sectors / agencies share the responsibility for ecosystem-based management? How do fisheries management structures engage with other users?

The concept of ecosystem-based management underpins ESD but at this stage there has been no serious attempt to introduce it in Western Australian or Commonwealth fisheries. An ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management might be reflected by the following characteristics.

1. The point of reference for fisheries management performance shifts from the fishing operation to the key interdependent components of fished ecosystem.

2. Fisheries management is conducted on a bio-regional (rather than on a stock distribution) basis under a set of objectives agreed by all stakeholders that address the cumulative impact of all human activities on the ecosystem. Under this approach the definition of individual fisheries may have to change from management units based on attributes such as target species, zone, and gear / fishing method to units defined by the ecosystem components such as the food chains or benthic habitats in which the fishery is operating.

3. Performance measures include indicators of ecosystem condition as well as of operational outcomes. This will often require the existence of un-fished reference areas within fishing grounds.

4. Research and monitoring projects encompass interdependent ecosystem components that are not harvested or directly affected by fishing operations. In most cases a component at a trophic level above and below the target species level will be monitored. Monitoring designs that allow for the discrimination of fishery induced changes from natural variations, and from the impacts of other human activities (e.g. climate change and land-based pollution) will also need to be developed.

5. Data on ecosystem state will be collected using a range of fishery and fishery-independent sampling methods. (The current reliance on research by autopsy would not be acceptable in an ecosystem-based management regimen).

6. Decision rules will be constructed to provide for early and precautionary responses to unacceptable levels of ecosystem change.

7. Whilst remedial measures will involve operational factors in the fishery the point of reference for measuring performance remains the ecological response. For example the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for albatross mortality in a tuna and billfish fishery is the recovery of albatross populations not just improved bycatch statistics.

8. The fishery is managed to facilitate benefits to the fishing and non-fishing sectors. For example marine no-take areas may have limited application for stock conservation in the Australian context but may be established by Fisheries managers in order to meet wider community biodiversity conservation, scientific reference and other objectives.

Clearly these characteristics of ecosystem-based management are not currently within the scope of fisheries agencies. Fisheries management will not be able to “go it alone” in moving towards this sort of approach. In the meantime fisheries environmental assessment will occur without a viable planning framework and fisheries management will be based on essentially operational objectives with unknown and unspecified ecological outcomes.

Environmental assessment processes generally have two failings. Firstly they are project or activity focussed and do not account for cumulative effects on ecosystems. Secondly, they place the onus of proof on respondents rather than proponents or operators. This second failing has become a matter of concern in the risk assessment processes that have been adopted to deal with the lack of information on the ecological effects of fishing.

Risk Assessment

Both the SCFA (ESD) reporting and EA (Environmental Assessment) processes are utilizing risk assessment to deal with questions about the environmental and ecological effects of fishing. There are two perspectives on the purpose of risk assessment;

1. a rigorous discipline used to identify and prioritise the issues requiring management action, or

2. a rhetorical device used to argue that there is no problem or need for management action.

The outcomes may be largely determined by the underlying motivation.

From the conservation sectors point of view the credibility of any particular risk assessment will depend on how well the risks can be estimated from the monitored history of the activity. In most Australian fisheries there is little or no information on the structure of biotic communities prior to the introduction of intensive fishing activities or of how they have changed with fishing effort. The fishery situation is a bit like looking at apparently intact stands of native terrestrial vegetation today without the knowledge of what has been lost due to subtle changes in fire patterns. Without historical information it would be easy to draw the wrong conclusions about the condition of ecosystem and the ongoing impacts of fishing or to set ecological objectives.

References

CoA (Commonwealth of Australia) 1991. Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Groups – Fisheries. AGPS, Canberra.