Harvest control rules in modern fisheries management
ConEvolHer project leader Katja Enberg participated in a Climate Change workshop in Ulvik in 2014, where work on a paper looking at the history, the present performance, and the future potential of Harvest Control Rules was initiated. Finally, this group effort has now been published in a special issue on Climate change impacts: Fish, fisheries and fisheries management.
Abstract:
Harvest control rules have become an important tool in modern fisheries management, and are increasingly adopted to provide continuity in management practices, to deal with uncertainty and ecosystem considerations, and to relieve management decisions from short-term political pressure. We provide the conceptual and institutional background for harvest control rules, a discussion of the structure of fisheries management, and brief introductions to harvest control rules in a selection of present day cases. The cases demonstrate that harvest control rules take different forms in different settings, yet cover only a subset of the full policy space. We conclude with views on harvest control rules in future fisheries management, both in terms of ideal and realistic developments. One major challenge for future fisheries management is closing the gap between ideas and practice.