The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is rooted in the Treaty of Rome. After its completion in 1983, the policy framework was gradually reformed through decennial reviews in 1993, 2003, and 2014. Due to geopolitical, physiographic, and historical reasons, the EU implementation of the CFP is most developed in the North Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, and the Baltic Sea, and less developed in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. However, the CFP applies throughout European Union (EU) waters, which that are treated as a “common pond.” The CFP has been heavily contested since its introduction, and over long periods was characterized as a management system in crisis. Historically, the CFP has arguably struggled to perform and the policy’s ability to meet its objectives has not uncommonly been undermined by factors such as internally contradictory decisions and inefficient implementation. Since the turn of the century, the policy has changed its course by incrementally institutionalizing principles for a more environmentally orientated and scientifically based fisheries management approach. In general, in the latest decade, fisheries have become increasingly sustainable in both environmental and economic terms. An increasing number of fish stocks under the CFP are being exploited at sustainable levels—a development that is likely to continue, as fish stocks are coming to be more commonly managed along the lines of science-based multi-annual management plans. Consequently, many fishing fleets, particularly those deployed in northern waters, have shown good economic performance in recent years. This development has been further facilitated by the introduction of market-based management principles; in most member states these have been implemented by granting de facto ownership to fishing rights for free in the name of ecological and economic sustainability. This has, however, in many cases also led to huge wealth generation for a small privileged group of large-scale fishers at the expense of small-scale fisheries and smaller fishing communities, as well as society at large; this situation has led to calls for both a fairer distribution of fishing rights—to protect the small-scale sector—and for a resource rent or exploitation fee to be collected for the benefit of society at large, which is the true owner of fishing resources. Consequently, social sustainability, understood as the improved well-being of fishing communities and a fairer sharing out of the benefits derived from fisheries resources, should be a subject for the CFP to consider in the future.
The profile of small-scale fisheries has been raised through a dedicated target within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG14b) that calls for the provision of 'access of small-scale artisanal fishermen to marine resources and markets'. By focusing on access to fisheries resources in the context of the European Union, in this article we demonstrate that the potential for small-scale fishing sectors to benefit from fishing opportunities remains low due to different mechanisms at play including legislative gaps in the Common Fisheries Policy, and long-existing local structures somewhat favoring the status quo of distributive injustice. Consequently, those without access to capital and authority are faced by marginalizing allocation systems, impacting the overall resilience of fishing communities. Achieving SDG14b requires an overhaul in the promulgation of policies emanating from the present nested governance systems.
The purpose of this paper is to assess the status and prospects of the decarbonization of maritime transport. Already more than two years have passed since the landmark decision of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in April 2018, which entailed ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships. The paper attempts to address the following three questions: (a) where do we stand with respect to GHG emissions from ships, (b) how is the Initial IMO Strategy progressing, and (c) what should be done to move ahead? To that effect, our methodology includes commenting on some of the key issues addressed by the recently released 4th IMO GHG study, assessing progress at the IMO since 2018, and finally identifying other issues that we consider relevant and important as regards maritime GHG emissions, such as for instance the role of the European Green Deal and how this may interact with the IMO process. Even though the approach of the paper is to a significant extent qualitative, some key quantitative and modelling aspects are considered as well. On the basis of our analysis, our main conjecture is that there is not yet light at the end of the tunnel with respect to decarbonizing maritime transport.
The European maritime transport policy recognizes the importance of the waterborne transport systems as key elements for sustainable growth in Europe. A major goal is to transfer more than 50% of road transport to rail or waterways within 2050. However, waterways are at a disadvantage as they normally depend on transhipment and land transport to and from final destination. To meet this challenge we need a completely new approach to short sea and inland waterways shipping in Europe. This needs to include ships as well as ports and the digital information exchanges between them. A key element in this is automation of ships, ports and administrative tasks. The AEGIS project has been funded by the EU Commission to develop new knowledge and technology to address this challenge.
This study investigates the appropriate port governance model for implementation of green port management (GPM) practices. Relying on social systems engineering principles, we propose a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework considering four port governance models and five major GPM practice indicators. We validate the MCDM framework using survey data collected from top management executives of three ports in the Indian Ocean Rim — Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. We compare the Analytic Network Process (ANP) method with more recently developed Best-Worst Method (BWM) in analysis of the MCDM problem of finding the right port governance model for GPM. We collect data using the ANP and BWM survey in January 2019 and August 2019, respectively, from the same respondents. While participating in the study in January 2019, the respondents did not know that they would respond to the same MCDM problem using a different model, which corresponds to a repeated measures experimental design. In both analyses, we find that increasing privatization in port governance would enhance the implementation of GPM practices. Our study furthermore suggests that BWM is a reliable MCDM method with greater applicability than ANP, as it requires significantly lower number of judgement comparisons.
With expanding human uses at sea, the objective of maritime spatial planning (MSP) to promote sustainable coexistence between marine uses becomes an increasingly challenging task. In order to assess coexistence options, both use-use interactions and use-environment interactions are important to explore. Tools for doing cumulative impact assessments (CIA) on the environment provide a means for spatially exploring environmental impacts. Finding inspiration in such ecosystem-based spatial use-environment approaches while drawing on pairwise marine use compatibility knowledge from existing literature, a spatial approach to model potential synergies and conflicts between marine uses through an expert-based scoring system is presented and implemented in SEANERGY, an ArcMap-based opensource toolbox. A test based on Baltic Sea GIS data demonstrates how SEANERGY supplements CIA analyzes with knowledge about potential use-use synergies, potential use-use conflicts, and their spatial extents, useful for optimizing the use of marine space in MSP without putting too much cumulative pressure on the environment.
Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) requires the analysis of the spatial distribution of marine uses and environmental conditions. Such analyzes can be carried out with GIS, but standard GIS programs do not feature a toolbox that combines the most needed functionalities for such analyses. The SPACEA toolbox presented here was created to bundle and adapt existing functionalities in one toolbox. SPACEA consists of several script tools that have been designed to be user-friendly and applicable to different analyzes for MSP. This includes the processing of different input layers with regard to marine uses and environmental conditions. The main functionalities of SPACEA are exemplified in a fictional case study in the Baltic Sea, where the tools are applied to find potentially suitable areas for mussel farming. The tools feature a user-friendly interface and more experienced users may also use the provided sample codes to run it from the python window or as a stand-alone script. As such, the tools can be applied by users with different levels of GIS knowledge and experience.
Around 70% of our planet is covered by water. Just as human activities on land require planning, planning is also needed at sea. How can the space at sea be allocated to activities for use and protection in a space-saving way? How can we think across the different sectors so that marine planning is more coherent? These are questions that I am working to answer in my Ph.D. at Aalborg University, Copenhagen.
With expanding human uses at sea, the objective of maritime spatial planning (MSP) to promote sustainable coexistence between marine uses becomes an increasingly challenging task. In order to assess coexistence options, both use-use interactions and use-environment interactions are important to explore. Tools for doing cumulative impact assessments (CIA) on the environment provide a means for spatially exploring environmental impacts. Finding inspiration in such ecosystem-based spatial use-environment approaches while drawing on pairwise marine use compatibility knowledge from existing literature, a spatial approach to model potential synergies and conflicts between marine uses through an expert-based scoring system is presented and implemented in SEANERGY, an ArcMap-based opensource toolbox. A test based on Baltic Sea GIS data demonstrates how SEANERGY supplements CIA analyzes with knowledge about potential use-use synergies, potential use-use conflicts, and their spatial extents, useful for optimizing the use of marine space in MSP without putting too much cumulative pressure on the environment.
There is growing evidence that the ecosystem service (ES) concept can provide valuable input to marine spatial planning (MSP), by highlighting which ecosystem goods and services can be produced from a planning area. ES link the underlying ecosystem processes and functions to the benefits humans can receive from ecosystems (the ecosystem cascade). In this study, we argue that the ecosystem cascade can be used to structure the stock-taking and future scenario analysis in MSP. However, indicators, which are needed for measuring ES, have often been applied in various ways to the different steps of the cascade. Here, we apply a consistent approach to sorting indicators into the cascade. The indicators are presented in an indicator pool that can be used to filter them based on the cascade steps, several quality criteria, and themes. The pool consists of 772 indicators, of which 735 were analyzed. In total, 252 analyzed indicators belong to the provisioning services, 314 indicators to the regulating services and 169 to the cultural services. The indicator pool offers a suitable starting point to select indicators for ES assessments within MSP. Using indicators at the different cascade steps allows the assessment of i) the ecosystem components generating the services and ii) the impacts on ES and their beneficiaries when changes occur in the provision of the services due to planning or management decisions.