4 results
Communities
PROJECT NUMBER • 2016-152
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

NCCP: Building community support for carp control: understanding community and stakeholder attitudes and assessing social effects

The present study, undertaken by University of Canberra, was developed to investigate the potential to engender support for the recommendations included in the NCCP byassessing potential impacts of carp control on different groups, and ensuring key stakeholders are able to access, understand and...
ORGANISATION:
University of Canberra
Communities
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-189
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

NCCP: Socio-economic impact assessment and stakeholder engagement

The present study, undertaken by University of Canberra, was developed to investigate the potential to engender support for the recommendations included in the NCCP byassessing potential impacts of carp control on different groups, and ensuring key stakeholders are able to access, understand and...
ORGANISATION:
University of Canberra

Development of a fisheries stream in a new an innovative online course in environmental statistics offered by the University of Canberra

Project number: 2002-322
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $8,000.00
Principal Investigator: Arthur Georges
Organisation: University of Canberra
Project start/end date: 13 Mar 2003 - 30 May 2006
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Statistics is an indispensable tool in modern research. All involved in research and development require some grounding in statistics, whether it be to design and implement a research program and analyse the results, or to properly evaluate the published results of others, or to assess the promise of a proposal put forward for funding.

Fisheries management is grounded in science, and good science requires an underpinning of sound experimental design, sampling and statistical analysis. There is a need to increase the base level of competency in statistics at the workplace and for all levels of people involved particularly in the developing countries, and in so doing, provide support for the research effort that underpins the management of our fisheries resources.

Objectives

1. To develop a graduate certificate course in environmental statistics specifically targeted at fisheries and aquaculture and to deliver it to individuals in their current working environment by delivering the course online.

Assessing Australia's future resource requirements to the Year 2020 and beyond: strategic options for fisheries

Project number: 1999-160
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $318,750.00
Principal Investigator: Robert Kearney
Organisation: University of Canberra
Project start/end date: 11 Jul 1999 - 29 Nov 2005
Contact:
FRDC

Need

As shown in Figures 1 and 2 world human population growth is increasing at the greatest rate in history, but fisheries production has stagnated or declined since 1990. The oceans can produce only marginally more than they do at present. Demand for fisheries resources continues to increase, perhaps even faster than population growth as the culinary and health advantages of seafoods are being increasingly realised.

Australia has no specific policies to provide increased seafood resources for future generations. We already import more than half the seafood we consume. The lack of long-term policy is directly linked to the lack of understanding of the factors which truly influence supply and demand. No Australian fisheries management agency plans beyond resolution of current resource use problems. Recent crises resulting from the realisation of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation highlight the urgency for Australia to look much further ahead for all natural resource use and management strategies.

Modern economies depend on the concept of growth as a key element of their success. Notwithstanding the emergence of the service industries as an increasing proportion of this economic growth, the Australian economy still depends on an increasing primary production base to supply both domestic and export demand. While the proportion that fisheries might supply to Australia’s export demand might be stable as a percentage, the physical output in terms of tonnes per year grew considerably over the last 50 years. Most significantly, production has levelled, or even declined, in recent years. This physical aspect of growth often goes unnoticed in discussions around environmental sustainability, yet it is of critical importance to all our assumptions about the future of this country and therefore of our management of our fisheries resource base.

Fish, as food, and fisheries, both commercial and recreational, are tremendously important, fundamental components of most Australian's perception of what the future should hold. For the many tens of thousands employed directly or indirectly in fish related industries the social implications of long-term sustainability use of fish resources is even more pressing. Yet our resources and the ecosystems which underpin them are streteched or even over-taxed. It is extremely important for all associated with fish resource use and conservation that the status of individual fish resources be increasingly used by Governments as indicators of ecosystems health and therefore play an expanding role in Australia's total resource use projections. A current FRDC commissioned review of threats to, and potential solutions for, Australia's freshwater fisheries has identified increased use of fish as indicators of river health as the highest priority policy/management initiative.

While the recognition that many of our natural resources are linked across many aspects of a modern economy is hardly a new insight the CSIRO modelling initiative has attempted to bring quantitative data together to allow these linkages to be explored. The purpose of this work is to explore and choose sets of management and policy options which might contribute to more sustainable modes of operation for the Australian physical system. Many contemporary expressions such as “the weightless economy”, “the factor 4 economy” and “the zero waste economy” are meant to describe these new modes of more sustainable (or less physically impacting) operation.

This research proposal aims to describe from a national viewpoint the operation of the fisheries industries (commercial and recreational) in relation to their own long-term potential, and in relation to the other resource industries which might depend on, or impact on the fisheries resource. The particular modelling framework is designed to deal with long-term issues on time scale of 25, 50 or even 100 years. It attempts to define the quantities of fish demanded by both domestic and export requirements, as well as drawing on our current knowledge of the quantities that might be supplied from our fish stocks.

Currently the ASFF model is being used in long-term studies of Australia’s population requirements (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs), its long-term energy position (CSIRO internally funded) and its long-term land and water position (LWRRDC funded for 3 years).

As FRDC’s portfolio of research investment is being revamped to include the multiple demands being made by societal expectation, the commercial industry and the recreational fishery, now is the time for a considered investment in a long-term viewpoint. Current shortfalls in total fishery production dictate a certain urgency in defining some long-term options which provide a strategic framework where more focussed and local investments can contribute their part in unison, rather than in isolation.

Objectives

1. Provide analysis of the long range perspective of tensions between fisheries demand and production at a national level for use in fisheries policy development.
2. To identify and quantify the linkages between the demands generated by human population growth and affluence and their effects on a range of natural resources, particularly capture fisheries and aquaculture.
3. To test a range of policy options which might resolve demand and supply imbalances at a national level out to 2020 and beyond.
4. To underpin future fisheries management policies by providing a comprehensive long-term view of the dynamics of production and demand for resources.
5. To enable fisheries to be properly incorporated into an on-going national program of modelling future natural resource demand and demographic influences.
6. To provide a simplified interpretation of Australia’s total long-term resource demands and production to enable the fishing industry to better understand their relationship with other resource users and with national development policies.

Final report

Author: Robert Kearney
Final Report • 2004-04-01 • 1.47 MB
1999-160-DLD.pdf

Summary

The Australian fishing industry has grown rapidly into an industry with a gross value of production of approximately $2.4billion. However, in recent years many of the resources that underpin the industry have shown the effects of excessive human impact, both targeted and accidental. As human populations grow, demand for fish increases as do the negative effects on fish populations of human impact on fish habitats and the environment in general. Clearly our limited fish resources cannot meet continuous growth in demand, and yet assessment of how we might respond to the inevitable shortfall has not previously been attempted. It is this challenge that prompted scientists from the University of Canberra and CSIRO to work with FRDC to develop a means of modelling Australia's fisheries futures to 2050.
 
This report represents the culmination of the first nationally comprehensive physical accounting of the majority of the Australian fisheries industry. The fisheries industry forms one sector of the whole economy represented in the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework (ASFF). A fifty-year history of the industry was recreated using ASFF and data provided by Australian fisheries agencies and the FAO. Simulating forward from the historical picture, three primary scenarios describing plausible futures were designed and examined, as a means for exploring the effects of key drivers rather than making precise predictions.
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