Fisheries Assessment and Decision Making: Towards an Integrated Advisory Process

The fisheries governance crisis, the consequent adoption of a sustainable and responsible development framework and the efforts to implement a precautionary and ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) have raised the awareness about the systemic nature of fisheries and the uncertainty surrounding the science-policy-decision interface. The consequences include the request for an increased scope of the scientific enquiry, improved cross-disciplinary collaboration and more effective stakeholder participation, both in the scientific and decision making processes. Science and governance have co-evolved for a century and will continue to do so. Trends in social demand and scientific community response are briefly examined, focusing on scientific approaches, the disciplinary puzzle and the ongoing encounter between the normal and post-normal (positivist and constructivist) science paradigms brought about by the formal recognition of uncertainty and the need for greater involvement of social sciences. The contribution of key elements of modern advisory processes (i.e. integration, simulation and participation) is briefly reviewed as well as ongoing practices in fisheries management advisory processes and at other interfaces between science and environmental policy. Following logically, an Integrated Advisory Process (IAP), accounting for the systemic, cross-disciplinary and participative nature of modern fisheries governance, is sketched and its epistemological and operational implications are briefly reviewed.