Towards Evaluating the Socio-economic Impacts of Changes to Queensland’s Inshore Fishery Management

The outputs of this project include a detailed socio-economic baseline for commercial, charter and recreational fishers and seafood consumers within the Queensland East Coast Inshore Finfish Fishery (ECIFF, the ‘Inshore Fishery’), prior to management change for the fishery. This baseline will contribute to an assessment of the impacts of management change on the fishery stakeholders (a Fisheries Queensland priority), and assessment of the performance of the ECIFF Management Plan (a DEWHA requirement). The project, and this report specifically, also provides a suite of the most important and useable socio-economic indicators for use in long-term monitoring of Inshore Fishery stakeholders. The indicators will be incorporated within the Performance Measurement System (PMS) for the fishery, adding to the ecological indicators and hence more completely fulfilling the goals of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). The socio-economic indicators selected in this project are fishery and sector specific;however the project adjusted and tested a process for selecting indicators, which can be applied to other case studies. This research directly benefits Fisheries Queensland by providing a detailed baseline and a clear set of indicators selected by transparent methods by all stakeholders in the fishery. This will allow managers to implement a long-term socio-economic monitoring system, explore impacts and outcomes from management change, and more clearly integrate socio-economic factors into management decisions. This in turn benefits Inshore Fishery stakeholders by ensuring their needs are considered and integrated into management, reducing impacts of management change, and improving trust and relationships between stakeholders and managers. Greater understanding and consideration of socio-economic factors will improve socio-ecological resilience within the whole fishery. Fishery managers and the stakeholders involved in the project were very supportive of the process and outcomes. Fisheries Queensland has provided a commitment to include socio-economic indicators in the PMS for the Inshore Fishery. This commitment ensures adoption of the indicators into their existing monitoring system, with this report providing essential guidance for the review of the PMS framework in 2010/11. Stakeholder groups are also being encouraged to contribute to indicator data collection where possible.