Synthetic summary report on social and economic aspects of fishing for online tool

<p dir="ltr">The SEAwise project works to deliver a fully operational tool that will allow fishers, managers, and policy makers to easily apply Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management. This SEAwise report synthesises the work conducted under SEAwise on the integration of socio-economic dimensions into mixed-fisheries bio-economic modelling and the operationalisation of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) in Europe (SEAwise WP2).</p><p dir="ltr">The work focused on two objectives:</p><ul><li>To identify the key social and economic benefits of fisheries, including their role in employment, revenues, food supply, health, and community resilience.</li><li>To assess how management measures affect these benefits, under changing climatic and socio-economic conditions.</li></ul><p dir="ltr">The work built on EU and international policy frameworks – including the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), the FAO Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF), and the GFCM 2030 Strategy – as well as SEAwise scoping and synthesis workshops. Ten deliverables were integrated, covering literature reviews, enhanced bio-economic sub-models, socio-economic indicators, governance studies, and health assessments. Case studies across four regions (North Sea, Western Waters, Mediterranean, and Baltic) served as testbeds for models and indicators.</p><p dir="ltr">The key methodological advances included are:</p><ul><li>Enhanced economic sub-models including, among other things, variable costs, fuel use and price dynamics,</li><li>Behavioural sub-models incorporating fisher decision-making,</li><li>Development of social indicators reflecting employment, wages, vulnerability and community reliance,</li><li>A structured methodology to evaluate health impacts of fish consumption, integrated nutritional benefits and contaminant risks.</li><li>Governance assessments through surveys and case studies.</li></ul><p dir="ltr">The work strengthens the capacity of mixed-fisheries models to support EBFM, linking ecological, economic, social, and health objectives. Future priorities include improving gender-disaggregated and community-level socio-economic data, enhancing behavioural modelling, and consolidating governance indicators to ensure more inclusive and adaptive fisheries management in Europe.</p><p dir="ltr">The work confirmed the feasibility of estimating future socio-economic indicators using bio-economic models, while also demonstrating the added value of explicitly linking ecological and social objectives. Across case studies, a consistent pattern emerged: small-scale fisheries (SSF) dominate in terms of vessel numbers and employment, while large-scale fisheries (LSF) contribute more to landings and economic value. The balance between these factors varies considerably between regions, highlighting the importance of tailoring management strategies to local contexts.</p><p dir="ltr">The Input–Output analyses revealed that profitability, expressed as Gross Value Added (GVA) to revenues, varies greatly between regions: demersal fleets in the Bay of Biscay showed ratios of around 90%, while in the Eastern Ionian values were as low as 37%. These differences demonstrate how fuel costs, fixed capital intensity, and labour structures shape economic resilience across fleets. Carbon footprint indicators provided additional insights as scenarios consistent with F_MSY not only reduced CO₂ emissions per kilogram of fish landed but also preserved larger shares of organic carbon in spawning stock biomass, thereby safeguarding marine blue-carbon functions even under adverse climate projections. In contrast, PGY scenarios sometimes increased overall carbon extraction, particularly when effort levels were higher, demonstrating the importance of effort controls to attain long-term sustainability.</p><p dir="ltr">The socio-economic indicators (GVA, wages, meals, revenues SSF-LSF ratio) across management and socio-economic scenarios (CERES) showed that, in several contexts, SSF was crucial in sustaining local jobs and coastal community resilience, but was also more vulnerable to fluctuations in fuel costs and market conditions. Food provision, measured as the number of fish portions generated, highlighted the direct contribution of fisheries to food security, while health-related analyses showed the dual role of fish as both a nutritional resource and a potential vector for contaminants, with small pelagics and demersals generally offering high benefits at low risk. Governance assessments revealed that inclusivity and trust remain weak points, particularly where top-down structures prevail, yet regional initiatives demonstrated promising pathways for more participatory and adaptive management.</p><p dir="ltr">Together, these findings illustrate how socio-economic considerations can be systematically incorporated into fisheries management evaluations, filling critical gaps identified in the literature. SEAwise particularly advanced the state of the art by embedding employment and wage indicators, integrating SSF/LSF differentiation, and linking behavioural dynamics to economic modelling. Moreover, SEAwise extended the analysis to underrepresented regions and explicitly addressed carbon emissions and health impacts, issues previously lacking in fisheries bio-economic studies.</p><p dir="ltr">SEAwise case studies ensured that the approaches developed are robust across contrasting contexts. The work demonstrated that management strategies and socio-economic pathways often exert a stronger influence on outcomes than climate change, and that trade-offs between ecological, social, and economic objectives are inevitably context-specific. Future efforts should aim to improve the availability of socio-economic data at disaggregated levels, enhance behavioural modelling to capture fisher responses more realistically, and further incorporate governance indicators in efforts towards EBFM. The approaches developed within WP2 provide a strong foundation for the operationalisation of EBFM in Europe, supporting policy discussions on the sustainability and resilience of fisheries while ensuring that ecological, economic, social, and health dimensions are jointly considered.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">Read more about the SEAwise project at www.seawiseproject.org</p>