Currently there are fragmented standards and no agreement of the indicies that should be used for the social assessment of sustainable marine aquatic resources. This work, while ultimately for the Food and Agriculture Office of the UN, will provide a vehicle to feed previous Australian work into an international forum, to be assessed and potentially used as the international standard of approach to social assessments of ESD.

The need for this coordination program arises from the limited understanding that we have of the social aspect of fishing at the individual, business/group or sectoral levels, and the ways in which this activity interacts with the broader community. It has become increasingly clear that the management of fisheries (commercial, recreational or traditional) has profound social implications for fishers, their families and the communities they support. Equally, the co-management of the fisheries resource is unlikely to be comprehensively achieved without awareness of the different drivers for decision making by both fishers and management agencies. These decisions, while related to economics are not necessarily solely driven by economics, but also by the social dimension. The current lack of information in this area inhibits effective engagement on issues affecting fishers and fishing, and the facilitation and development of leadership, communication and adaptation capacity within and across the different sectors.

Through a range of different techniques, social science research can address these issues and complement biological and economic research, to support practice and community perception change. While previous investment into the social aspects of fisheries has (due to circumstance) been opportunitistic and uncoordinated, this coordination program will provide a strategic approach to the social aspects of sector issues and operations. Specifically, the program will seek to leverage research from past projects, and build synergies between current projects in both the social and other discipline research areas, across all sectors. In this way, it is envisaged that funds invested by FRDC will be more efficiently used, with project outcomes that have a greater reach than if they were implemented in isolation.

The practical integration of social and economic elements in assessments is important in Australia, and is also an international challenge. Recent research in Australia (2010/040 and the Integrated EBFM workshop held in March 2014) which contributes to developing this field should be shared internationally and used to leverage further knowledge. To this end, the applicant is recognised as one of the leads in this field in Australia and accordingly can bring benefit from developing further aligned international connections. There are events occurring in September and October 2014, being two sessions at the ICES conference and a workshop in Canada with the CFRN that provide unique opportunities to progress the development of integrated EBFM methodologies.

To maximise progress in this domain, it is necessary to draw together as many sources of knowledge and experience as possible. Consequently, participation in the activities proposed here and through the development of the Community Of Practice by the CFRN, FRDC and Australia's exposure will be increased to new and emerging approaches that can address the current integration challenge, while also profiling the already significant progress we have made in Australia.