Value- and ecosystem-based management approach: the Pacific herring fishery conflict

An innovative value- and ecosystem-based management approach (VEBMA) is introduced that aims to expose policy tradeoffs, resolve resource conflicts, and foster ethical governance. VEBMA is applied to the Pacific herring Clupea pallasii fishery in British Columbia, Canada, which is mired in conflict between local and indigenous communities and the fishing industry over the management of herring, a forage fish with significant ecological, socioeconomic, and cultural value. VEBMA integrates an ecosystem-based approach (ecological modelling) with a value-based approach (practical ethics) to examine the ecological viability, socioeconomic feasibility, and societal desirability of alternative fishery management scenarios. In the socioecosystem-based approach, we applied the Management Strategy Evaluation module within the Ecopath with Ecosim modelling framework to explore scenarios with harvest-control rules specified by various herring fishing mortalities and biomass cutoff thresholds. In the value-based approach, Haida Gwaii community and herring industry participants ranked a set of values and selected preferred scenarios and cutoff thresholds to open the fishery. The modelled ecological and socioeconomic impacts and risks and stakeholder preferences of the scenarios are synthesized in a deliberation and decision-support tool, the VEBMA science-policy table. VEBMA facilitates inclusive, transparent, and accountable decision-making among diverse stakeholders, such as local communities, industries, scientists, managers, and policy-makers. It promotes ethical governance in pluralistic societies via compromise, rather than consensus solutions to resolve 'wicked' problems at the science-policy interface.