2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – Management Effectiveness – Indigenous commercial fishing

The Marine chapter of the 2021 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "Management Effectiveness of Indigenous commercial fishing". 
<strong><em>A PDF of the full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided) is downloadable in the "On-line Resources" section of this record as "EXPERT ASSESSMENT 2021 - Management Effectiveness - Indigenous Commercial Fishing"</em></strong>



DESCRIPTION OF THE APPROACH TO MANAGING THE PRESSURE
Management of Indigenous Commercial Fisheries requires regulatory bodies to understand and enable practices for access, inclusion, and decision-making by Traditional Owners.  Management measures need to be consistent with the rights of Indigenous Peoples and avoid unintentionally or unnecessarily impeding the economic development for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.  Around Australia, each community experiences their own inherent challenges with securing access to commercial fisheries, inclusion in the management of the commercial fisheries and influence and input into management measures (Lee, 2019; Schnierer et al., 2018; Schnierer &amp; Egan, 2012). Opportunities within commercial fishing enterprises remain inaccessible to most Traditional Owners in Australia.   This inaccessibility has flow on consequences to limiting the involvement of Traditional Owners in the operation and management of Indigenous commercial fishing industries.

In Australia, experiences have demonstrated that policy initiatives aimed at creating development and employment opportunities for Indigenous communities often fail because they do not incorporate the broader prerequisites for success. These include closely involving the community in designing and implementing initiatives, as well as, investing in education, business training and broader capacity-building.  Indigenous fishing principles were developed by the National Indigenous Fishing Technical Working Group (NIFTWG) in 2004 to encourage the recognition of Indigenous traditional fishing practices, to enhance Indigenous involvement in commercial fisheries related enterprises (commercial fishing, charter fishing and eco-tourism activities) and to encourage greater participation in fisheries management.  An audit carried out by Schnierer et al. (2018) assessed the frequency of the NIFTWG principles in fisheries related documents. The audit reported that all seven principles occurred in approximately 4% of documents and none of the principles were addressed in 53% of documents. This highlights the ongoing and still incomplete process of legislative reform and transition to best practice of culturally grounded management frameworks.  

To date in Australia, there are no examples of co-management approaches in commercial fisheries. A study by Plagányi et al. (2020) describes a harvest strategy developed in an indigenous commercial fishery in the Torres Strait with consultation that provides a vehicle for traditional knowledge and objectives but is still constrained within the institutional (top-down) governance and policy obligations. In the Torres Strait, Traditional Owners have been involved in guiding the harvest strategies for commercial species over many years.  This history is seeing the harvest strategy, in the case of the beche-de-mer fishery, being designed to have regard to Traditional Knowledge and the ability for communities to manage fishery resources locally, complemented by customary and traditional laws for guiding local practices by communities (Plagányi et al., 2020).  A roadmap is being developed and lead by the Torres Strait Regional Authority towards 100 per cent ownership of the commercial fisheries by Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal Traditional Owners in the region. 

Since 2016, there has been some re-structures and transitions within fisheries management frameworks intended to recognise Indigenous fishing and build strengthened engagement with Indigenous fishing stakeholders.  The Productivity Commission Review on Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture (Productivity Commission, 2016) devoted a chapter on Indigenous Fisheries and raised recommendations relating broadly to policy, leadership, and consistent approaches.  In 2017, changes were made to the Fisheries Management Act 1991 to require the Australian Fisheries Management Authority to ensure interests of Indigenous fishers considered in Commonwealth fisheries management decisions. Alongside this, was the release of Commonwealth fisheries resource sharing framework in 2020 and a call to develop an Indigenous Engagement Strategy for fishing interests with a focus on Commonwealth fisheries.  The Indigenous Reference Group of the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation has been actively responsive to regulatory and policy change, as well as, supporting priority areas of research.  Foundations and connections are being advocated and incrementally built for research learnings and recent re-structures frameworks to better support the primacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to grow Indigenous commercial fisheries. 

DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT
The information used in the assessment was based insightful statements from reports and articles on Australian Indigenous commercial fishing.



2021 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details]

• Approach •
Assessment grade: Partially effective
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Limited
Confidence trend: Limited
Comparability with 2016: Not previously assessed.
• Outputs •
Assessment grade: Partially effective
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Limited
Confidence trend: Limited
Comparability with 2016: Not previously assessed.
• Outcomes •
Assessment grade: Partially effective
Assessment trend: Unclear
Confidence grade: Limited
Confidence trend: Limited
Comparability with 2016: Not previously assessed.



CHANGES SINCE 2016 SOE ASSESSMENT
Not previously assessed.

Tags: anthropogenic pressure, expert assessment, indigenous commercial fishing, marine management
Organization: Australian Ocean Data Network