Resilience-based management for small-scale fisheries in the face of global changes and uncertainties

Operationalizing resilience in fisheries management is a challenging issue in the face of global changes. In this perspective, Grafton et al. (2019) propose a heuristic based on the ‘3Rs’ of resilience, namely resistance, recovery, and robustness. The work presented here applies this generic framework to the coastal fishery of French Guiana, which is under pressure because of climate and socio-economic uncertainties. To this end, a dynamic multi-species, resource-based and multi-fleet model is developed and calibrated using catch and effort time series. The search for a more resilient management leads us to compare different fishing management strategies and projections, including `Business as usual' (BAU), `Multispecies Maximum Sustainable Yield' (MMSY) and `Multispecies Maximum Economic Yield' (MMEY) strategies. The comparison between the strategies relies on ecological-economic viability goals and thresholds. The two normative strategies MMSY and MMEY turn out to provide major gains in terms of the 3Rs and ecological-economic resilience as compared to BAU.