46 results
Communities
PROJECT NUMBER • 2012-300
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Social Science Research Coordination Program (SSRCP) II

This report summarises the key activities of the Social Sciences and Research Coordination Program II (SSRCP II), which was implemented in 2012 and concluded in 2015. It focuses on the key objectives of the Program, achievements and recommendations for future iterations of this type of Program, or...
ORGANISATION:
KAL Analysis
TAGS
Social Science
Social Science
Human Dimensions Research
Economic
Communications

Human Dimensions Research Subprogram management

Project number: 2016-128
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $426,567.00
Principal Investigator: Emily Ogier
Organisation: University of Tasmania (Hobart)
Project start/end date: 31 Jul 2017 - 29 Mar 2021
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Social Science
Social Science
Human Dimensions Research
Economic
Disease

Need

A Human Dimensions Research Subprogram presents the FRDC and stakeholders with the opportunity to maximise investment in and effectiveness of human dimensions RD&E for Australian fisheries and aquaculture. This is achieved by: - Providing the Subprogram with capacity to lever greater overall investment in human dimensions RD&E through co-investment arrangements: Capacity to co-invest or directly commission will enable the Subprogram to ensure that a higher number of human dimensions RD&E needs, as identified by RACs, IPAs and other Subprograms, are addressed through successful applications. This capacity to collaborate and co-invest with RACs, IPAs and/or other Subprograms not only acts as an incentive for further investment in human dimensions RD&E, it increases the likelihood that high quality and effective research is undertaken which will meet stakeholders' needs. It will achieve this through a number of mechanisms including: providing funding for appropriate expertise to be included in teams of research applicants; and, creating incentives for more integrated RD&E in which human dimensions research can be embedded in more traditional fisheries and aquaculture research projects. - Providing leadership and coordination where required to draw on a range of expertise to tackle complex problems: Capacity to directly commission or call for RD&E will enable the Subprogram to meet needs for targeted, strategic RD&E to address some of the issues which are preventing improved outcomes for fisheries and aquaculture stakeholders. These include issues such as the previously uncoordinated investment in measurement of the economic and social contributions made by different sectors, in response to which the Subprogram will draw on recognised expertise to develop a common position on metrics, methods of measurement and interpretation. This will in turn increase credibility of contribution studies and the return on investment in such studies.

Objectives

1. Identify human dimensions RD&E priorities annually, through review and consultation with key fisheries and aquaculture stakeholders (RACs, IPAs, Subprograms, AFMF) and develop projects to address those priorities
2. Promote coordination and co-investment in human dimensions RD&E across RACs, IPAs and Subprograms
3. Ensure quality and relevance of humans dimensions RD&E through review of applications and project reports
4. Support the FRDC in the management of a portfolio of projects with significant human dimensions research components
5. Facilitate extension and adoption of human dimensions R&D outputs
6. Build and support capability in human dimensions research to meet the needs of fisheries and aquaculture

Workshop

Author: Emily Ogier and Maree Fudge
Workshop • 2019-05-22 • 270.03 KB
FRDC Mental Health RDE Workshop_21Sept2018_FINAL REPORT.pdf

Summary

A National RD&E Workshop was held on 21 September 2018 in Adelaide, South Australia, in which representatives of industry, research, management, and service providers addressed how to make a positive difference to the mental health of people in fisheries and aquaculture.

The impetus for the workshop came from the FRDC Board and the FRDC’s Seafood Safety and Welfare Initiative. Both the Board and the Initiative are responding to the range of tactical industry-led activities commencing or proposed to address falling levels of mental health among members; the need for a gap analysis of available RD&E; and, to better acknowledge the link between mental health and workplace health and safety.

Participants established the level of leadership and commitment, reviewed the current state of knowledge of mental health levels and contributing factors, and compared what strategies supporting mental health are currently available within fisheries and aquaculture with evidence-based strategies from the mental health support sector.

Project products

Report • 2021-02-09 • 4.16 MB
2016-128-Product-Impacts-COVID19-Report-01Mar2021.pdf

Summary

This report documents the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian Seafood Industry (January-June 2020)
 
IMPACTS OF COVID-19 JANUARY-JUNE 2020
  • There is no single seafood industry COVID-19 story. The degree of exposure, impact and recovery for sectors and businesses, whether wild caught or farmed, varied in magnitude, ranging from positive, neutral, negative and in a few cases, catastrophic.
  • Between January-June 2020, overall domestic production initially fell but then re-bounded from April 2020 onwards. This can be attributed to the declaration of the seafood supply chains as essential, the easing of COVID-19 restrictions halfway through the period, and the ability of producers to find and adapt to alternative markets.
  • Sectors negatively impacted by COVID-19 were those exporting live and fresh product, supplying dine-in food service, heavily reliant on international air freight and affected by movement restrictions.
  • Live and fresh export products were significantly negatively impacted due to a decline in both price and volume, e.g. the value of Lobster and Abalone exports declined by 45%, while live and fresh seafood exports overall declined in value by 32% compared with the five-year average for the same period.
  • Sectors positively impacted were those supplying domestic retail and take-away food service markets which normally compete with fresh international imports. These sectors experienced a rise in demand and in some cases, price. As a result, value of these types of domestically sold products generally remained relatively stable with any decline in production volumes offset by rising domestic prices.
  • Forecasts of profits for 2020, particularly wild-catch, have been lower. This has been attributed to lower revenues and increases in some operating costs, particularly transaction costs in adapting to COVID-19 prevention measures. Sectors experiencing price gains or successfully accessing alternative markets also experienced substantial transaction costs as a result of adaptation to ensure business continuity.
RESILIENCE OF THE SEAFOOD INDUSTRY
  • Across the industry, business uncertainty related to COVID-19 was amplified by the effects of other factors affecting this uncertainty e.g. bushfires, drought, exchange rates.
  • Government support measures have assisted the seafood industry weather some of the negative impacts on profitability and business continuity.
  • The COVID-19 disruption continues, and further indirect effects are being experienced. What seafood industry recovery looks like and how resilience can be built is still evolving.
  • Differences in degree of exposure, impact and recovery will continue across sectors of the Australian seafood industry.
ASSESSING IMPACTS
  • Data about production, immediate post-harvest, wholesale and processing, transport and freight logistics, and markets activities has been sourced and collated in this rapid assessment to understand how COVID-19 has impacted the Australian seafood industry across its supply chain stages.
  • Data gaps exist. Timely access to near-real time data from all jurisdictions and from major seafood markets is needed to enable more targeted economic analysis at the sector level. This is particularly the case for aquaculture sectors.
  • Further assessment of longer-term and emerging impacts based on more timely and comprehensive data will further support the Australian seafood industry in being prepared for future disruptions.
Report • 2021-08-31 • 1.06 MB
2016-128-DLD.pdf

Summary

The Human Dimensions Research (HDR) Subprogram provided the FRDC and stakeholders the opportunity to overcome market failure in human dimensions RD&E investment, and to maximise that investment in and the effectiveness of human dimensions RD&E for Australian fisheries and aquaculture. This is achieved through the Subprogram’s capacity to:
• Provide leadership and coordination where required to draw on a range of expertise to tackle complex problems. Capacity to directly commission or call for RD&E enabled the Subprogram to meet needs for targeted, strategic RD&E. The capacity to co-ordinate complex multisectoral and multijurisdictional RD&E avoided unnecessary duplication, enabled economies of scale to be realised, and ensured comparability of results.
• Lever greater overall investment in human dimensions RD&E through co-investment arrangements. Co-investment with stakeholders enabled the Subprogram to be more cognizant of and responsive to their needs, for appropriate human dimensions expertise to be included in teams of research applicants and for human dimensions R&D to be more effectively integrated in traditional fisheries and aquaculture research projects.
 
The outcomes of investment in RD&E by the Human Dimensions Research Subprogram has been positive for Australia’s fisheries and aquaculture, in combination with other supporting factors, in the following ways:
• Delivering and sharing social and economic benefits is core business for sustainable management now, and tools are in place to support assessment, decision making and policy design
• Levels of community trust and acceptance are stronger, and more positive impact is within reach through more effective engagement
• Behavioural insights can be harnessed to support compliance, innovation, adoption of best practice
• Australia’s fisheries and aquaculture have evidence of their contribution to economic and social wellbeing at the national and state level
• Price and productivity improvements can be incorporated into fisheries management
• Preparedness for future uncertainty and global shocks is stronger because of learnings from impacts and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and disruption.
 
 
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2015-300
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Social Science and Economics Research Coordination Program (SSERCP)

The SSERCP project has been successful in providing timely and relevant advice to the drafting and reviewing stages of RD&E priorities, projects and reports in order to maximise beneficial outcomes of this investment for fisheries and aquaculture. It has been successful in supporting the FRDC...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
TAGS
Workshop
Training
Stakeholder
Social Science
Social Science
Blank
Environment
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-159
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Retrospective assessment of ITQs to inform research needs and to improve their future design and performance

The use of transferable fishing rights has increased internationally over recent decades with most industrialised countries now using some form of individual transferable catch quota (ITQ) or individual transferable effort (ITE) system for at least some of their fisheries. Australia also has...
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Environment Hobart
TAGS
Social Science
Social Science
Individual Transferable Quota
Human Dimensions Research
Fisheries Management
People
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-152
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Social Matters Workshop

The project brought together Australian seafood industry social scientists for the first time ever in a specific and dedicated meeting, to discuss our identity, our role in governance, our past and our future. The Social Matters workshop ran over two days and involved 20 scholars, researchers and...
ORGANISATION:
Deakin University Geelong Waterfront Campus
TAGS
Stakeholder
Human Dimensions Research
Capacity Building
People
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-174
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Women in Seafood Australasia - Understanding, supporting and promoting effective participation by women within the Australian seafood industry

This FRDC project, Understanding, supporting and promoting effective participation by women in the Australian seafood industry, was pivotal for WISA in supporting its future direction as an organisation. Research undertaken showcased the significance of the roles and contributions of seafood women...
ORGANISATION:
Women in Seafood Australasia (WISA)
TAGS
Workforce
Training
Media
Leadership
Human Dimensions Research

The right conversations - Identifying optimal stakeholder engagement and evaluation practices for fisheries

Project number: 2017-133
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $69,250.00
Principal Investigator: Nicki Mazur
Organisation: ENVision Environmental Consulting
Project start/end date: 14 Dec 2017 - 29 Jun 2018
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Stakeholder
Resource Sharing
Resource Sharing
Human Dimensions Research
Fisheries Management

Need

Improved seafood industry engagement with its stakeholders/communities remains a high priority for the Fisheries Research & Development Corporation (FRDC) to address low rates of societal acceptance and/or support. The FRDC recognises that social support for the seafood industry relies heavily on members’ improving their understanding of people’s views about the industry, and on building more trusting relationships with those people - especially those with direct influence on resource access decisions. In addition to being more effective ‘engagers’, the industry also needs to be able to evaluate how effective their engagement activities are and how they can continually build community trust. Towards that end, the FRDC commissioned a range of projects focusing on building the seafood industry’s capacity for effective stakeholder/community engagement (e.g. Ogier & Brooks 2016, FRDC 2014/301, 2011/525; Ham 2010, 2001/310), long term industry leadership (e.g. FRDC 2011/410), and adaptation and well-being (e.g. 2012/402) - all of which are necessary for the industry to build social support.

However, it remains unclear how and to what extent industry members are using these and other resources to help them ‘engage’ with their stakeholders/communities. It is believed that there are obstacles that can limit industry members’ use of these resources and their general engagement practices, including:

1. Industry members not seeing the full relevance or need for engagement;
2. Industry members perceiving ‘engagement’ as marketing and/or product promotion;
3. Industry members lacking the necessary expertise, capability and capacity in engagement;
4. Lack of knowledge and information about the comparative effectiveness of various engagement activities and strategies, particularly in a fisheries context; and
5. Ineffective extension of existing information (e.g. unsuitable formats).

This Project is designed to explore how and to what extent these and other barriers keep the seafood industry from making substantive progress towards building greater stakeholder and community trust.

Objectives

1. Conduct desktop research to ascertain the range of factors influencing (primary) industry’s use of available and best practice engagement strategies, tools and practices.
2. Identify examples of effective and accessible processes for designing and evaluating targeted engagement strategies (for primary industries, including fisheries).
3. Identify means for industry to assess the effectiveness of engagement activities (evaluation) to give confidence in their investments
4. Share project findings with the primary audience (the Human Dimensions Program and seafood industry leaders).
5. Improve understanding of key barriers to the seafood industry’s adoption of existing best practice models and methods of engagement.
6. Improve applicability of existing engagement resources for seafood industry to increase their capacity to effectively engage with its stakeholders and communities.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-646-99461-1
Author: Nicole Mazur and Kate Brooks
Final Report • 2018-10-30 • 1.58 MB
2017-133-DLD.pdf

Summary

This Project aimed to improve understanding of how and to what extent certain barriers keep the seafood industry from making substantive progress towards building greater stakeholder and community trust.  The Project was designed to meet this aim by researching obstacles to, and enablers of, practice change; examples of good engagement; and evaluation practices in fisheries settings, and collate that information into a cogent report and end user frameworks, that will be both useful in guiding the FRDC HDR in future investments and for dissemination by the FRDC HDR as appropriate for the benefit of the industry.
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