Project

The overall objective of this project was to address the poor understanding of the links between management tools, fleet developments and the pressure exerted on fishing communities, and more precisely to supply fisheries managers with a modelling tool that will allow them evaluating the impact of regulations on the dynamics of fleets and fishing mortality.

ITAC focuses on administrative arrangements to restrict and monitor fishing mortality. The aim is not only to describe regulatory arrangements, but to offer an understanding of how these systems function as wholes and why they have attained their present forms. An understanding of the management systems does not only require knowledge of the various institutions, but an understanding of how they are woven together - how they mutually restrict and shape each other. The main research question is: how and under which conditions can regulations aimed to restrict fishing mortality be successfully implemented at the administrative level?

The project will undertake four case studies divided on three different types of regulation schemes: 1) Direct catch regulation (Norwegian cod fisheries), 2) Capacity utilization (The Faroe Island demersal fishery) and 3) Indirect catch regulation (The North Sea cod recovery plan - having a Danish perspective & Recovery plans in Galicia).

Coordinator: Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute (NILF)

Through the project 'Fiskens Fodaftryk', extensive work has been done to uncover key challenges related to assessments of the climate impact of Danish fisheries ('CO2 footprint') through life cycle assessments (Life Cycle Assessment, LCA). 'Fisheries' in this context covers the catch stage, although subsequent stages such as processing and transport also contribute to the climate impact of fish products via CO2 emissions related to these stages.

On a general level, the project has explored different methodological approaches, the importance of assumptions, data availability, and partly the communication challenges that may arise when calculating the climate impact of Danish fisheries. Ultimately, the project's results can contribute to future opportunities to work in a targeted and documentable manner to reduce the climate impact of Danish fisheries, where this is possible and appropriate. The project's insights will also be relevant in the context of the development of consumer-oriented environmental and climate labels or campaigns.

The project has focused in particular on examining the possibilities and limitations of making climate impact assessments based on data that is continuously and systematically collected at the national level for (approximately) the entire fisheries sector. Such an approach could potentially make it manageable to continuously produce uniform assessments that cover the entire fisheries sector, as models and data processing procedures can thus be applied uniformly and effectively to the entire sector.

The project is funded by the Fisheries Tax Fund 2020-2021, and the output and activities from the project are made available continuously via this page.

The project investigates the green transition to fisheries and fisheries technologies that are sustainable in a life cycle perspective. The project intends to combine knowledge on fisheries policy, management, and technology with data and methods from industrial ecology and product environmental assessment to obtain a deeper and multidimensional understanding of the impact of fisheries and improve decision making for stakeholders and policymakers in this sector.

The project has two key objectives: 1) to develop new methods that accurately assess the climate impacts of fisheries accounting for constraints in supply, 2) to identify the trade-offs between fisheries practices that promote sustainable harvesting of stocks and the more recent drive to fish in a climate-friendly way.

The project combines expertise, tools, and methods from three different research domains: life cycle assessment, fishing technology, marine governance.