Background
of ESDRA Subprogram
Ecologically Sustainable
Development (ESD) is now accepted as the foundation for natural resource
management in Australia. Since the
national strategy was published in 1992, ESD has become explicitly - or
implicitly - a major objective of all fisheries legislation at both State and
Commonwealth levels. Moreover, various
changes to other Commonwealth and State environmental legislation, along with
increased community expectations, have increased the urgency to implement the
principles of ESD for all fisheries in a demonstrable manner.
To show that they are meeting the
objectives of ESD, fisheries management agencies - and in some circumstances,
the industry itself - need to be able to measure and report on progress against
its principles. To do this will require
the development of a suitable framework for the reporting and assessment of ESD
that will include:
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operational objectives,
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appropriately robust performance indicators and
associated ways of measuring performance; and,
-
most importantly, the management methods employed to
meet these objectives.
Most fisheries agencies have taken measures to ensure
sustainability of fish stocks under their jurisdictions, particularly in
relation to those species that are retained during fishing. However, the scope of ESD is much broader than
simply measuring sustainability.
Without clear criteria and indicators to measure all
aspects of ESD - including ecological, economic, social and governance
components - fisheries agencies and the fishing industry risk being unable to
demonstrate that they are achieving, or even pursuing, ESD objectives.
During the last four years, a
number of projects have been initiated to specifically address the
implementation of ESD in relation to the fishing industry. A review of the sustainability indicators
and ESD issues within each fisheries jurisdiction was completed in 1998
(Sainsbury, et al. 1998), which resulted in a recommendation that a nationally
coordinated R&D program on sustainability indicators should develop options
that could be used in all jurisdictions.
It was recognised that such a
process should, therefore, be closely linked to the operations of the then Standing
Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture (SCFA), which included the heads of each
fisheries management agency in Australia.
More precisely, the review identified four main areas that required
attention if ESD was to be implemented in Australia's fishing industry:
Defining the terminology and the ESD framework.
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Capturing national and international experience on ESD
reporting.
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Developing national guidelines.
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Developing and testing the options for sustainability
indicators.
Subsequent to this review and the
emergence of other related issues, the SCFA established a Sustainability
Indicators Working Group in 1999 to facilitate the development of nationally
agreed criteria and sustainability indicators.
This group facilitated the development of a project proposal, designed
to develop a conceptual framework and reporting framework for ESD and to test
it using a series of case studies.
This concept was presented at the
Geelong ESD workshop in March 2000, where it received strong support from the
various stakeholder groups present.
However, there was a clear requirement for the formation of a national
ESD Reference Group to ensure continued and effective stakeholder involvement
in the process.
Following the approval for the
project to develop reporting arrangements for ESD, the SCFA Working Group, in
conjunction with the newly formed Reference Group, developed an initial
conceptual framework for ESD and a series of core objectives. Utilising this framework, proposed reporting
arrangements were developed, based largely on the work that had been done by
the Bureau of Rural Sciences (Chesson & Clayton, 1998; Whitworth and
Chesson, 2000), the SCFA research committee, the United Nations' Food and
Agriculture Organization report on sustainability indicators for fisheries
(FAO, 1999) and the reporting arrangements already in place in jurisdictions
(e.g. Anon, 2000; AFMA, 2000).
This proposed reporting framework
has now been tested during a series of case studies that covered a wide variety
of fishery types and information levels.
At the workshop held in October
2000 to discuss the outcomes of these case studies, it was generally agreed
that the process performed well in providing a report of what was currently
occurring. However, there were a number
of areas identified where further work was needed, including:
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Developing expertise to collect and interpret data for
the social and economic components of ESD.
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Increasing the effective communication of the issues
relating to ESD to all major stakeholder groups.
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Developing methods to ensure active participation of
indigenous groups in the ESD process.
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Developing the ESD framework and guidelines to enable
the process to become a method of assessment, not just of reporting.
Some of this work will be
incorporated into current projects, but some requires separate projects to be
developed. Note there are already other
projects, such as the ‘Seafood Chooser’ , that have developed Environmental Management System processes for commercial fisheries
which have a direct application to this issue.
It is also anticipated that many
new applications will be developed to address aspects of ESD assessment and
reporting. Moreover, there are many
other projects that will have an indirect impact on these issues (e.g. a
project on the impacts of trawling), with their results being used to develop
or modify the objectives and indicators that can be used in ESD assessment and
reporting.
Given the large amount of work
that is already underway - and the amount likely to be initiated in coming
years - having a process to coordinate research effort at a national level that
ensures maximum synergy and minimal duplication would be very sensible. These ESD assessment and reporting projects
are likely to fall into two main categories - developing suitable conceptual
methodologies to appropriately deal with the new issues identified, and
building the technical capability at a national level to implement these
developments.
