Research On China’s Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management

As a public resource, Marine fisheries resources are competitive, sharing,non-exclusive and uncertainties. Resource users are faced with a strong temptation of"free rider", which could easily lead to excessive use of marine fishery resources,resulting in " commons’ tragedy ".Thus, the limitation and scarcity of marine fisheryresources has become increasingly prominent. In this regard, the researchers explainthe phenomenon by three kinds of theoretical models, that is" commons’ tragedy ""Prisoner’s Dilemma" and "Logic of Collective Action", trying to providemanagement concepts and institutional arrangements to solve the problem ofover-exploitation of fishery resources. At the same time, in order to achievesustainable use of marine fishery resources, the world pay more attention on marinefisheries management. To ensure marine fishery resources will be developed andutilized rationally, experts and practitioners from different fields have to constantlyenrich and improve marine fisheries management principles and practices. From thebeginning of the1940s, with the improvement of the theoretical system of ecology,and human re-examine their relationship with nature, theories and methods related toecology are gradually introduced into the traditional environment management. Sincethe1980s, a large number of research works on the theory of ecosystem managementhave emerged, the concept began to be recognized in some foreign countries. Until the1990s, research and application on concept of ecosystem management has become anew hot spot. In1992, the United Nations convened the Summit on Environment andDevelopment, giving an adequate attention to the ecological system, since then, theinternational instruments on ecosystem-fisheries management were promulgated,some regional international organizations began to adopt an ecosystem method tomanage marine fisheries.Human’s over-fishing on fishery resources, the marine environment pollution,disorderly competition and the deletions of industry self-regulation concept are a serious threat to the sustainable use of marine fishery resources. Some rare species areendangered, healthy and sustainable development of marine ecosystems are sufferingfrom a severe test. Since the implementation of china’s reform and opening policy,with the rapid development of China’s fishery economic, total of marine fisheryresources continued to show a downward trend. At present, China’s marine fisheriesresources are currently facing with recession, environmental pollution, poormanagement and other issues. Although China has taken a series of managementmeasures like fishing permit system, closed areas, closed seasons, minimum meshrestrictions and so on, but the effect is not significant. In order to change the statusquo of China’s fishery resources using, ecosystem-based marine fisheries managementprovides a new choice path to break the current plight of fishery management.In this paper, the author take the methods of interdisciplinary and cross-study, doresearch from the perspective of management, sociology, environmental ethics andecology. The author rich the marine fisheries management theory and institutionalsystem by combing marine fisheries management paradigm. On the base, the authoranalyses current problems on the use of fisheries resource and management,elaborates content, objectives and methods of ecological fishery management andproposes the path to achieve ecosystem-based marine fishery management in China.Following are the specific content:First, the paper sorts out and analyzes the evolution of marine fisheriesmanagement models, including government centralized marine fisheries managementmodel, rights-based marine fisheries management model, community-based marinefisheries management model and the ecosystem-based marine fisheries managementmodel. Secondly, in-depth study problems of China’s marine fishery resourcesutilization such as changes in the structure of fishery resources, polluted coastalwaters, imbalance of fishing structure and further explore and analyzes the reasonsand the necessity and feasibility of implying ecosystem-based marine fisheriesmanagement. Again, this paper explained the meaning, objectives and methods ofecosystem-based marine fishery management. The author defines the concept ofecosystem-based fisheries management,summarizes the overall objective and methods of ecosystem-based fisheries management. Finally, this paper explores theimplementation path of ecosystem-based fisheries management, including division ofmanagement unit, the establishment of marine fisheries management monitoring andevaluation system, establishing ecological protection areas, improving ecosystem-based fisheries management regulations, strengthening the research on scientifictheory and raising public awareness of ecological and so on.Inadequacies of this paper is that even though a large marine ecosystem researchhave been carried out for many years in China’s coastal waters and have a series ofdiscussions about the theory and practice of ecosystem-based fisheries management,most of the discussion is about the theory,far away from the application of specificmethods. Ecosystem-based fishery management is a frontier exploration projects. Theprojects is only in its infancy in many fishery developed countries. There are littlepractical experience and observation on experience. Thus, this paper aims to providean initial reference of action frame and theory fishery managers.