SOCIOEC is an interdisciplinary, Europe-wide project bringing together scientists from several fisheries sciences disciplines with industry partners and other key stakeholders to work in an integrated manner on solutions for future fisheries management that can be implemented at a regional level.

Background and Objective

The central concept is to provide a mechanism for developing measures that are consistent with the overarching sustainability objectives of the EU, and that can provide consensus across all stakeholders. The first step will be to develop a coherent and consistent set of management objectives, which will address ecological; economic and social sustainability targets. The objectives should be consistent with the aims of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and other EU directives, but they should also be understandable by the wider stakeholder community and engage their support. This will then lead to the proposal of a number of potential management measures, based on existing or new approaches. The second step will be to analyze the incentives for compliance provided by these measures. In particular, we will examine fishermen's responses and perceptions of these measures, based on historical analysis as well as direct consultation and interviews. This project part will also examine how the governance can be changed to facilitate self- and co-management to ensure fishermen buy-in to promising management measures. In particular, the project will focus on the interpretation of overarching (i.e. EU) objectives in local and regional contexts. Finally, the project will examine the impacts of the management measures that emerge from this process, particularly in terms of their economic and social impacts. The Impact Assessment analysis will be integrated by evaluating the proposed measures against the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and coherence. Special attention will be paid in evaluating the proposed management measures' performance in terms of their ability to achieve the general and specific ecological objectives.

Target Group

Policy makers, Associations, Scientific Community and Public.

Approach

The project is organised in seven workpackages (WP): WP 1 contains the project coordination and is led by the Thünen Institute of Sea Fishereies as project coordinator; WP 2 shall develop specific sustainability objectives especially for social and economic sustainability; WP 3 analyses incentive structures in past, current and future fisheries management measures; in WP 4, possibilities of the new fisheries policy regarding regionalisation and stakeholder envolvement will be analysed; WP 5 consists of qualitative and quantitative assessment of impacts of fisheries management measures of the new CFP; WP 6 is coordinating the case studies (Baltic Sea, North Sea, Western Waters, Mediterranen and Black Sea, pelagic fisheries in EU waters and selected non-EU fisheries); WP 7 organises stakeholder events, provides technical assistance like the website and disseminates the results.

Data and Methods

Qualitative and quantitative data is used, mostly on social and economic variables from the European Data Collection Framework (DCF) and sometimes collected specially for the project. Social data is collected by means of interviews, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and stakeholder workshops. Modelling is performed using Fishrent, IBM and Fcube.

Our Research Questions

How can we improve the methodologies of Impact Assessments on fisheries management measures?

Results

The main results are:

• a list of overarching sustainability objectives, especially for social and economic sustainability, with a high buy-in of stakeholders
• a first comprehensive legal analysis of the possibilities for regionalisation and stakeholder involvement of the new CFP
• a first nearly complete compilation of all implemented fisheries management measures in the EU regional seas
• insights into the incentive structure of current management measures
• assessment of impacts of new instruments of the reformed CFP especially also for the landing obligation

Links and Downloads

• SOCIOEC Legacy Booklet
• SOCIOEC project website

Thünen-Contact

• Döring, Ralf Institute of Sea Fisheries

Involved Thünen-Partners

• Berkenhagen, Jörg Institute of Sea Fisheries
• Goti, Leyre Institute of Sea Fisheries
• Kraus, Gerd Institute of Sea Fisheries

Involved external Thünen-Partners

• Aalborg University – Research Centre for Innovative Fisheries Management
  (Aalborg, Dänemark)
• University of Copenhagen – Institute of Food and Resource Economics (UCPH)
  (Kopenhagen, Dänemark)
• Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI), part of Wageningen University and Research (WUR)
  (Wageningen, Niederlande)
• Technical University of Denmark – National Institute of Aquatic Resources (DTU Aqua)
  (Charlottenlund, Dänemark)
• Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR)
  (Anavisso, Griechenland)
• French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea (IFREMER)
  (Brest, Frankreich)
• The Institute for Economic Research in Fishery and Aquaculture (IREPA)
  (Salerno, Italien)
• University of Iceland – The Institute of Economic Studies (IoES)
  (Reykjavik, Island)
• Karadeniz Technical University – Faculty of Marine Science (KTU – FMA)
  (Trabzon, Türkei)
• University of Portsmouth (UoP), Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE)
  (Portsmouth, Großbritannien (Vereinigtes Königreich))
• The National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway
  (Galway, Irland)
• University de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO) –Joint Research Unit (UMR): Center for the Law and Economics of the Sea (Amure)
  (Brest, Frankreich)
• Christian-Albrechts-University (CAU), Department of Economics, Kiel
  (Kiel, Deutschland)
• Marine Institute (MI)
  (Galway, Irland)
• Tecnalia-AZTI. Marine and Food Technological Centre. The Marine Research Division
  (Bilbao, Spanien)
• Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) FISHREG
  (Ispra, Italien)
• AquaTT
  (Dublin, Irland)
• Pêcheurs de Manche et Atlantique (PMA)
  (Brest, Frankreich)
• Kutterfisch-Zentrale GmbH (KF)
  (Cuxhaven, Deutschland)
• A/S Læsø Fiskeindustri (LF)
  (Læsø, Dänemark)

Duration

3.2012 - 2.2015

More Information

Projekt type:
Project funding number: 289192
Funding program: EU – FP7 – Thematic Priority "Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology"
Project status: finished

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