An Institutional Framework for Designing and Monitoring Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management Policy Experiments

Abstract

"Indicator systems are seen as central tools for ecosystem-based fisheries management, helping to steer fisheries towards sustainability by providing timely and useful information to decision-makers. Without testing hypotheses about the links between policies and outcomes, however, indicator systems may do little more than promote ad hoc policies, prolonging the transition to fisheries sustainability. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is a robust framework that has been used extensively to design policy experiments and empirically test theories and models linking ecological-economic systems, institutions and the sustainability of common pool resource systems. A modified IAD framework is developed that transparently encompasses both pressure-state-response and sustainable livelihood frameworks, thus providing a platform for ecosystem-based fisheries management policy experiment design, monitoring and the communication of complex information on the state of fisheries sustainability. The institutional approach to designing and monitoring fisheries policy experiments facilitates critical examination of important ecological economic issues in fisheries, including the role of fisheries policy compliance on sustainability and how market, government and non-governmental organizations use strategic investments in capital assets and institutions to achieve sustainability. The emphasis on capital keeps attention on the relative returns accruing to investments in different types of capital assets and facilitates the consideration of ?non-traditional? policy responses. The Scotia-Fundy multi-species groundfish fishery is used to illustrate aspects of the modified IAD framework. The framework should, however, be broadly applicable to problems of policy design and monitoring at project- to sector-level for various resources requiring ecosystem-based management."