Marine Station
An international symposium, Rebuilding Collapsed Fisheries and Threatened Communities, will be held in Bonne Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, October 1-4, 2012. Bonne Bay is in the heart of Gros Morne National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in western Newfoundland, and the home of Memorial University's Bonne Bay Marine Station.
The Rebuilding Symposium will take place 20 years after the collapse of several groundfish stocks in Eastern Canada. Despite a broad array of interventions, including government investments, prolonged moratoria, reduced quotas and industry restructuring, the fish stocks, adjacent communities and the industry as a whole remain vulnerable. In many rural communities of Newfoundland, people have been forced out of the industry, temporary and permanent outmigration of people from fishery dependent families continues and, despite efforts to diversify, the local economies remain weak.
The Newfoundland situation is not unique. The past several decades have witnessed both spectacular and devastating stock collapses as well as less visible problems with resource degradation that have had sustained effects on fishery-dependent communities and marine ecosystems in many parts of the world. Delayed and incomplete rebuilding can threaten the contribution of capture fisheries to food security, livelihoods and employment and industrial and community resilience. Too often, these delays mean that the people and communities that depended upon collapsed fisheries are not in a position to benefit from the sacrifices they have made to support stock rebuilding. There are many possible reasons for this, including: fishing industries change in the wake of stock collapses, as do market opportunities and the sourcing of fish supplies and products; youth and even adults are often forced to leave the industry and their communities to find work and may face steep economic and regulatory barriers to re-entry; science and management institutions may be under-resourced and poorly designed for sustainable management of rebuilt fisheries.
Experience shows that it is often difficult to rebuild collapsed fisheries (stocks and fishing communities) - indeed, while Jentoft and Chuenpagdee (2009) have argued that fisheries governance is a wicked problem, Khan and Neis (2010) have argued that rebuilding collapsed fisheries is particularly wicked. These challenges are likely to increase in the future due to the effects of climate change (changing ocean temperatures, currents and acidification), invasive species, increasing population and development pressures in coastal areas, the effects of intensive aquaculture and increasing technological efficiency, changing markets, growing scientific uncertainty and dwindling investments in science and governance.
The Rebuilding Collapsed Fisheries and Threatened Communities International Symposium will be a multi-stakeholder event and will take a problem-solving approach to defining and addressing this particularly wicked problem. It will bring researchers from multiple disciplines and from different regions of the world together with industry, government and fishery community representatives to do this work. The Symposium will provide an opportunity to explore lessons learned from efforts to rebuild Eastern Canadian and other fisheries (including stocks, industries, communities and regional economies). It will have three main objectives:
- to deepen our understanding of why equitable and sustainable rebuilding of collapsed fish stocks and fishery-dependent industries and communities is so difficult;
- to explore the longer and shorter term risks collapsed fisheries pose to other fisheries and to the resilience of fish and invertebrate populations, marine ecosystems, fishing industries and communities; and,
- to identify policies and strategies for sustainable rebuilding from oceans to plate through better knowledge of fish populations and invertebrates and marine ecology; greater attention to fleet, processing, marketing and community and regional level issues and opportunities; that support and draw upon local marine resources as well as the heritage, knowledge and other resources in fishery-dependent households and communities; are resilient to change; are multi-generational in their orientation, and that address the combined needs of efficiency, equity, effective decision-making and uncertainty.
The Symposium will be organized and hosted by the Community-University Research for Recovery Alliance (CURRA). The CURRA is housed at the Bonne Bay Marine Station and its members include social and natural scientists, humanists, artists, and multiple community, industrial and government partners. CURRA members have spent the past five years exploring rebuilding challenges in Newfoundland's west coast fisheries and seeking to identify innovative strategies for tackling these challenges.
Call for Session Proposals
At this time we are inviting proposals for topical sessions that would discuss the lessons learned from taking a problem-solving approach to rebuilding fish stocks, fisheries and fishing communities. Sessions should address the challenges, trade-offs, barriers and opportunities for rebuilding.
Proposals should be a maximum of 500 words and should clearly outline the focus of the proposed session. Please provide a list of presenters, their affiliations and the titles for their presentations.
The deadline for session proposals was November 9th, 2011.
Registration Information and Symposium Program will be available in March 2012.
To enhance opportunities for dialogue, direct participation in the Symposium will be limited to a maximum of 100 people. A call for individual paper presentations/posters will be circulated at a later date if there is remaining space on the program.
Ideally, proposals will incorporate input from multiple disciplines and from community collaborators. Session proposals for panel presentations and roundtables are particularly encouraged, as our goal will be to achieve an effective balance between formal presentations and opportunities for discussion and informal exchanges.
We are particularly interested in proposals for sessions that report on:
- experience with effectively meeting the science and governance challenges of stock rebuilding. Examples include stock assessment challenges associated with scarcity and ecosystem change; generating and sustaining appropriate science investments for rebuilding; dealing with data deficient fisheries that experience increased pressure; establishing and accommodating stock rebuilding timelines to social and political realities; dealing with species at risk; habitat documentation, protection and restoration; and promoting stewardship.
- a range of challenges and alternative options/opportunities related to meeting frequent and potentially conflicting rebuilding-related requirements for industry restructuring and down-sizing; sustaining and transforming governance institutions; creatively responding to changing markets; and that address sectoral, regional, gender and intergenerational equity concerns.
- rebuilding challenges and strategies for dealing positively with impacts on other sectors; regional economies and infrastructure; youth employment and recruitment; skills retention; and intergenerational knowledge transfer and support.
We are also very interested in sessions that:
- present and assess strategies to promote synergies between fisheries and tourism or other industrial sectors; fisheries and the arts; fisheries, food security and local consumption; and,
- describe and evaluate initiatives that have made creative uses of fisheries heritage and culture as part of their rebuilding programs.
Session proposals will be peer-reviewed by a multi-disciplinary committee that also includes academic researchers and representatives from the wider community. The results of these reviews will be announced by January 31st 2012.
All presenters should keep in mind that presentations will be directed at a broad but informed audience.
In building the program, we will be striving for balanced representation from the natural and social and humanistic sciences, the visual and performing arts, from conservation NGOs, government departments and industry, labour and community groups. We will hold 25 places for students, postdoctoral fellows and young people because it is their generation that will have to carry forward this work on rebuilding.
We will be applying for funding to support outreach activities and to pay the travel costs of a small number of keynote speakers, students, community representatives and those from developing countries and to support innovative outreach strategies. We cannot, however, guarantee the availability of travel subsidies at this point in time. Those who are not able to attend in person should have an opportunity to follow core proceedings via the Voice of Bonne Bay Community Radio webcast.
We are making arrangements for the core proceedings of the Rebuilding Collapsed Fisheries and Threatened Communities International Symposium to be broadcast via the Voice of Bonne Bay, a regional community radio station, and webcast to a wider audience. We are hoping to organize a fisheries film and performance festival in association with the Symposium. Those who have produced documentaries and other visual and performance resources related to fisheries are encouraged to include these in their proposals and to watch for updates on our website.
There will be an opportunity to post comments during and after the symposium to a Symposium blog and on the CURRA Facebook page and to Twitter.
For further information, contact the session organizers.
Janet Oliver
Administrative Officer
Community - University Research for Recovery Alliance
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's, NL A1C 5S7
Telephone: 709-864-7551
Fax: 709-864-7530
email: joliver@mun.ca