Introduction

- Gloom and doom? The future of marine capture fisheries

Since the creation of FAO in 1945, the world has evolved dramatically and the change is accelerating, affecting what society wants or could achieve and what it does in practice. Fisheries, in particular, have undergone revolutionary mutations through progressive technological innovation, exponential development of fishing capacity, geographical expansion, development of an intense international trade and an innovative legal framework, the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. Fisheries have increased their contribution to human livelihood and food security, maintaining or improving the international terms of exchange, paying a heavy toll in human lives and environment degradation. Most fishery resources suffered more than advisable and some collapsed, affecting the sector’s economic viability and profoundly modifying the ecosystem, sometimes perhaps irreversibly. Owing to genuine public concern, enhanced through the activism of environmental NGOs, the romantic image of the courageous and adventurous fisher fighting against the generous, beautiful but treacherous sea has been progressively tarnished and fishers are now often presented as blind, greedy and irresponsible predators inflicting a major negative impact on the marine ecosystem.

The scientific literature contains numerous diagnoses of the widespread management failures and abundant prescriptions for improvement (Larkin 1972; Stevenson 1973; Johnston 1992; FAO 1993; Walters 1995; Garcia 1992; Alverson & Larkin 1994; Garcia & Grainger 1997; Garcia & Newton 1997; Mace 1997; Williams 1998; Sutinen & Soboil 2003).

This grim picture is not unique to fisheries; agricultural, forestry and freshwater resources, as well as the atmosphere, are also in a similar if not more serious and threatening situation (WRI 2002a; FAO 2003).

Fisheries are still evolving in various ways, at varying paces in different places and their future, shaped by internal and contextual driving forces and pressures, is both complex and uncertain. Institutional progress has been impressive, but the expected outcomes are slow to materialize owing to the necessarily slow response time of complex socio-economic and ecological systems. The effectiveness of what has been done cannot be easily measured, and yet further critical action is called for, with high potential socio-economic short-term costs for politicians. A profusion of miraculous prescriptions is provided by well intentioned ‘doctors’ but practical experience is still limited. Exacerbated by the growing and well orchestrated media pressure, societal impatience grows with its awareness as hard-pressed policymakers attempt to identify critical issues and alternative pathways.

In this context, the present value of information about the future increases significantly, providing the incentives for forecasting, despite the shortcomings of the enterprise. Chapman (1970) held that the task of forecasting fisheries’ future developments was facilitated by the fact that long-term global trends tended to be slow, persistent and consistent. However, all modern futurists would agree with Gallopin that it would be suicidal to consider the future as a simple extrapolation of the present. Niels Bohr, for instance, deduced, ironically, that ‘all prediction is difficult, particularly about the future’ (cited by Pope 1989), and predicting the future of any human activity and socio-ecological system is generally recognized as a precarious, tentative and highly subjective enterprise (Larkin 1991; Gallopin 2002). Two main difficulties are encountered in predicting the future of fisheries.

• Forecasting methodology and underlying models. It is unlikely that any mathematical algorithm could satisfactorily capture the complex, chaotic, nonlinear and often undetermined nature of the fisheries’ socio-economic and environmental systems. This is particularly true at the global level. Consequently, seemingly well grounded predictions may easily fail while some of the most interesting developments might remain unforeseen.
• It is impossible to predict the future of fisheries without a reliable prediction about the future of the world itself, an even higher-order challenge.

This document deals only with marine capture fisheries, referring only superficially to aquaculture in terms of its potential interactions. It reviews past forecasts, present trends and outlooks for single aspects of the fishery systems, as well as more comprehensive scenarios. After looking briefly at the driving forces that condition world developments, it reviews the types of scenarios available for the future evolution of the world itself and by inference, for fisheries, before concluding on the most likely pathway for the sector in the next decades.