Life below water: Indicator development for the monitoring of the Common Fisheries Policy, that enable progress for Sustainable Development Goal 14.
Description
The European Commission Joint Research Centre works together with the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF, Commission Decision 2016/C 74/05) to develop and compute indicators of the status of commercially exploited fish stocks by sea basin, on a yearly basis. The indicators are primarily designed in response to Article 50 of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP; Regulation (EU) No 1380/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013). The results of this exercise are published as JRC Science for Policy reports, including the data and analysis used.
The indicators were developed in cooperation between the Joint Research Centre; Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF); DGMARE; DGENV and Eurostat, with the objective of having common metrics where possible and a centralized data analysis that could feed into several processes (CFP Art. 50, SDGs, MSFD). Eurostat publishes those results annually (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4031688/9226701/KS-02-18-827-EN…). Moreover, the indicators developed for 14.4 are aligned with UN requirements, covering all EU waters and the fish stocks dwelling in those waters.
The indicators are commonly used for policy statements and assessment of the implementation of CFP sustainability objectives by the European Commission. EUROSTAT uses the results in their SDGs platform. The public and stakeholders use the same set of results for their own observations and conclusions.
The Joint Research Centre carries out the analysis on behalf of STECF, which reviews the methods and results every year before publishing.
The analysis, including the methods , is published as a JRC Science for Policy Report: https://stecf.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reports/cfp-monitoring.
The process of developing indicators was initialized in 2014 under the remit of STECF. This process included DGMARE and, at a later stage, later also EUROSTAT. All developments and results were reviewed by STECF and commented by DGMARE and EUROSTAT.
The entire set of results and methods are publicly available and disseminated.
Every year the protocol for the analysis and the results obtained are reviewed by STECF.
These results inform policy actors about the outcomes of their actions. The European Commission has taken up this information in their policy communications[1] and keeps an agenda of improving sustainability of fish stocks.
The indicators are computed for all EU waters, including areas where data availability is limited, like the Mediterranean. Efforts are made to keep consistent analysis across all sea basins, in particular indicators for SDG 14.4 are computed for all areas with as much information as possible.
The analysis is open and transparent, with all code and data made freely available. This fosters transparency and access to approaches and methods to scientists and stakeholders worldwide, and constitutes an asset also for the SDGs.
[1] COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION on the State of Play of the Common Fisheries Policy and Consultation on the Fishing Opportunities for 2019.
COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT Accompanying the document COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION on the State of Play of the Common Fisheries Policy and Consultation on the Fishing Opportunities for 2019; COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) 2018/2025 of 17 December 2018 fixing for 2019 and 2020 the fishing opportunities for Union fishing vessels for certain deep-sea fish stocks.
Proposal for a COUNCIL REGULATION fixing for 2019 the fishing opportunities for certain fish stocks and groups of fish stocks, applicable in Union waters and, for Union fishing vessels, in certain non-Union waters COM/2018/732 final.
• The JRC adopted the role of being the scientific driver of the process (method development, data processing and indicator computing);
• STECF provided important feedback on the process development and reviewed the outcome;
• DGMARE had a steering role making sure the outcomes of the process could be understood by policy actors and uptaken in the policy decision process.
Using public data and publishing all results and analysis made the cooperation with data providers, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) and STECF, transparent and fostered mutual trust.
The methods were developed to accommodate specificities of each sea basin, like data limitations in the Mediterranean, allowing the inclusion of all EU waters.
Transparency was built into the process very early on, making all data, results, tests and analysis public, and developing a protocol to deal with all details of data processing and model fitting.
Every report published comes with all data and code, allowing the replications of the process.
This could well serve as a paradigm for other SDG targets.
The CFP monitoring exercise aims at achieving sustainable fisheries, in line also with SDG target 14.4. Sustainability of fisheries assures the availability of the natural living resource fish in sufficient quantity also for future generations. This fosters socio-economic stability and food and nutrition security.
EUROSTAT uSDGs platform: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi
SDGS & Targets
Deliverables & Timeline
Resources mobilized
Partnership Progress
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| 14.4 | By 2020, effectively regulate harvesting and end overfishing, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based management plans, in order to restore fish stocks in the shortest time feasible, at least to levels that can produce maximum sustainable yield as determined by their biological characteristics |
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SDGs
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- Europe
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Contact Information
Laia Pinos Mataro, Policy Officer